Miró Quartet Performance Event: Live and Virtual
During the Fall 2004 Internet2 Member Meeting, an evening performance event, The Miró Quartet: Live & Virtual, showcased the use of cutting-edge networking and streaming technologies, and featured the world-renowned Miró string quartet, a group of University of Texas at Austin faculty. The event took place in two auditoriums, with the audience switching venues during intermission. Because UT Austin will soon renovate its largest performing arts venue, rendering it unavailable for two presenting seasons, this event also served as a prototype for staging a performance for an audience in two smaller auditoriums.
In the first auditorium, the audience saw and heard the string quartet in person. In the second auditorium, the audience saw the performance via real-time streaming High Definition Television (HDTV) and 10.2 channel immersive surround sound technology, developed by the Integrated Media Systems Center at the University of Southern California (USC). The 10.2-channel audio, projected over 26 speakers, allowed engineers to simulate how sound from an in-person performance reflects off acoustic surfaces in three dimensions. The HD stream featured four parallel channels, which captured each of the performers on stage individually.
To assess the effectiveness of the event, and to guide UT Austin as it remodels its large auditorium, researchers from USC's Institutes for Social Research and from UT Austin designed a survey to assess audience reaction to whether an immersive experience can provide an alternative to an in-person performance.
Photo courtesy of lesley nowlin