This year’s Glastonbury Festival saw two experiential spaces driven by the pioneering TiMax SoundHub spatial audio engine. As a centrepiece for the Greenpeace field, artist Wolfgang Buttress created a new permanent sculptural feature to highlight the plight of bees in the face of existential challenges such as pesticides, climate crises and the lack of biodiversity. Meanwhile within the warren of underground venues of The Rabbit Hole, Sova Audio applied TiMax spatialisation to create an altogether different dance arena experience at Funkingham Palace, through a multichannel Funktion-One sound system.

Inspired and indeed controlled by the activity of real bees – a colony of Cornish Black Bees in Michael Eavis’ own beehive – Beam is an interactive, multi-sensory and experiential sculpture that, with the help of TiMax and visual specialist RES London, envelopes visitors in immersive soundscapes and 360° projection and lighting.

Movement-sensing accelerometers, installed within the Glastonbury farm beehives, streamed live vibration data from the bees’ activity into the sculpture to control the musical key and tempo of the soundscape experienced by visitors in real-time.

Live bee broadcasts, multichannel bee recordings and a mix of multitrack music stems, from artists including Sigur Ross, Spiritualised and Coldcut were interwoven and propelled through the space by TiMax SoundHub. Artists playing at Glastonbury festival were invited to contribute by recording and writing site-specific musical stems – these would be added along with the live sound of the bees to the audiovisual experience.

At The Rabbit Hole, Sova Audio applied the immersive audio capabilities of TiMax SoundHub to an inner world, guarded by Alice in Wonderland inspired thespians – with riddles, carrots and magic potions to test wit and determination, Sova Audio’s George Yankov created a sophisticated and memorable sonic experience for house music and disco lovers.

Matching the venue’s dance-floor surround system was an identical monitor set-up for the DJs to experience the same dynamically spatialised audio mix. This was essential because Yankov leveraged the TiMax OSC integration to programme various spatial audio movements controllable from an iPad for the DJs to play with.

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