My first experiment with the technique was a Virtual Tennis recording, which I used to pitch my idea to the National Portrait gallery back in 2010. I decided to share it so put your headphone on and have a listen to this tennis player’s experience first hand >>
In 2011I made an interesting audio visual project for the National Portrait Gallery in London. The result was the film ‘under your skin’.
I learned about binaural recording techniques at Goldsmiths university and was very interested by the phenomenon and it’s amazing effect on our hearing and perspective. Binaural sound is a rather simple concept actually. Using a pair of microphones that look just like a pair of headphones, you place them in each ear and record your surrounding. Once the recording is done, you listen back to it on headphones and you get a sense of the exact surrounding the recording captured, including distance, direction, atmosphere, the whole thing. It’s not such a new technology but I was surprised how little known it is and how little it’s being used. Pearl jam made an album called ‘Binaural‘ which used this recording technique in 2000, but I haven’t heard of any other high profile projects that use it lately.
Virtual Tennis binaural audio recording
The most famous example of binaural recording out there is the virtual barbershop. Pretty intense when listened through headphones.
Read more about binaural recordings here.
Check out the virtual barber shop (USE HEADPHONES PLEASE!)
