Hotwire~ x Café Concrete

By geckohooks / / Uncategorized /

Overview

We’re super excited to announce a collaboration between two venerable institutions of the Plymouth experimental arts scene: Hotwire~ and Café Concrete! This project pairs up musicians/sound artists with film makers and visual artists, assigning each a location around Devonport to explore and respond to through a short (2-4 minute) audio-visual artwork/composition.

We originally intended to show this as part of the Devonport 200: Light Festival event in the spring of 2025, but due to unforeseen circumstances this will now not be possible. Instead, we’re aiming for a later date – perhaps Plymouth Art Weekender.

Locations

The locations we’re intending to work with (there may be some changes/editions to this, depending on interest) are:

  • Devonport Market Hall
  • Devonport Column
  • Devonport Guildhall
  • Mount Wise Viewing Tower
  • Mount Wise Outdoor Swimming Pool

Further Information

There are a few main ways to produce visuals for projecting in a dome:

  1. Filming and editing in 360 using cameras like the Kandao Qoocam, or Insta360
  2. Creating imagery using a normal camera (like an iPhone, DSLR etc.) and then stretching it over the curved surface of the dome (things will be warped and deformed, but that might be cool?!)
  3. Creating imagery using a normal camera and then editing as a series of split-screens across a really long composition that can be wrapped around a dome using a 2D>Dome plugin in Adobe After Effects or Premiere
  4. Using software like Blender, 3D Studio Max, TouchDesigner, After Effects etc.
  5. Or making a 3D scene in Unreal Engine. Use a dome virtual camera to render it.

This is cutting edge stuff, and there’s more than one way to achieve it, but we really welcome other ways of producing material for this. Essentially – experimentation is the key!

Andy Prior is happy to run a workshop in early/mid January to help you get started working for Domes – if this is of interest, please get in touch. And we have staff/technicians at University of Plymouth who can help and advise with this process – and maybe even students who can work with you if that’s helpful.

The dome also has a 19.1 surround sound system. It can use mono, stereo, 5.1 or 7.1 files, and map these onto its speakers, or you could use something like IEM free VST suite to create a mix specially for a 19.1 system. The University of Plymouth also has an ambisonic mic we can loan if you want to make spatialised recordings. Basically, if you want to spatialise sounds you can, but you don’t have to 🙂

If you want to get involved, please contact Matt Coombe or Andy Prior to let them know!