S 1 Planetarium (Excerpt)

Commissioned by exclusive diamond jewelry retailer Hearts on Fire, Illustrious created a series of 3D Soundscapes to play in their new stores that were opening across the globe.

Like the diamonds themselves these compositions were one offs that used spatialised sound to provide customers with an immersive retail experience.

Hearts on Fire

It's Always Ourselves We Find In The Sea / Installation Soundscape

Featuring a soundscape from Martyn Ware of Illustrious Company, Echo City was an installation at the Venice Architecture Biennale that described the city of Sheffield from a variety of scales.

Developed under the leadership of Jeremy Till, Director of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, Echo City was described as an “urban register” made up of found objects, architectural projects, photography, an immersive audio experience from Illustrious, and at its centre an interactive model by Jim Prevett which invited visitors to reconfigure urban elements from the surrounding installations.

For the exhibition, Ware created ‘1:10,000,000’, a soundscape that projected Sheffield’s relationship with the world at large, presenting the city as an exemplar of industrial cities everywhere.

In partnership with the Venice Architecure Biennale and the British Council.

Echo City: Diaspora Magnet

Held as part of the Switched On London Festival, Creatmosphere: Breathing Trees was a large-scale immersive outdoor light and sound installation that transformed two enormous trees located next to Potters Field Park into living, breathing lungs.

The two 20 metre high trees were illuminated using LED color changing technology to give the impression of ‘breathing with light’ while simultaneously the sound of breathing was played in 3D sound. 

A recreation of Breathing Trees, a work which was originally performed in 2006 at the Festival Arbres et Lumieres in Geneva, the restaging was a collaborative effort between Illustrious and Laurent Louyer of Creatmosphere. 

In partnership with Creatmosphere and Switched On London.

Creatmosphere: Breathing Trees

Alexis Kirke and Martyn Ware discover compelling patterns through computer analysis of Bowie’s lyrics, album sales and music features, presenting musical “sonifications” of their results as compositions. Part of V&A’s Bowie Friday Late, 18:30-22:00, 26th April 2013.

Plymouth University composer / research fellow Alexis Kirke and sound-artist / electronic music pioneer Martyn Ware, have discovered compelling patterns in numerical data from Bowie’s career; including song keys, computer lyric analysis results and album sales figures. Using “sonification” – the audio display of non-sound-data – they are able tohighlight the patterns. They will be playing their new sonification tunes, and explaining what this statistical music tells us about Bowie’s career.

Sonification is the audio-display of non-audio data. The most common forms are Geiger counters, and heart rate monitors. It has also been used to make patterns discernible in complex data – for example stock market data, or chemical structures have been turned into music to highlight their patterns. In this presentation, Alexis Kirke and Martyn Ware use sonification of David Bowie’s career data to help to make certain patterns in his career more “perceivable”.

To prepare data for sonification Alexis and Martyn have used statistical analyses of such things as the changes emotional content of David Bowies lyrics over the years, or the prominence of major and minor keys in Bowie songs. Other elements incorporated include album sales data. These are then mapped onto musical features such as tempo, pitch and loudness and turned into new musical compositions themselves, in an effort the make the progressions of Bowie’s artistic mood and commercial impact more understandable.

Sitting somewhere between music and statistical art, these Bowie career-sonifications are both entertaining and informative. Alexis and Martyn will be on hand to discuss and explain their analyses and composition process.

The Bowie Career-sonification is part of “David Bowie is making a scene”, a Friday Late at the Victoria and Albert Museum, celebrating their critically acclaimed and record breaking exhibition “David Bowie is”, 23 March – 11 August 2013. The V&A has been given unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive to curate the first international retrospective of the extraordinary career of David Bowie.

Alexis Kirke is composer-in-residence for the Plymouth Marine Institute. Alexis has completed two PhDs, one in Arts and one in Technology. He is a member of the University of Plymouth's Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research and is best known for his stock market reality opera ‘Open Outcry’, and his live action algorithmic bio-film ‘many worlds’.

Bowie’s Mood Music

Martyn Ware, Tracey Moberly and Sarah Hopkins have begun a multi-disciplinary and cross platform collaboration based on Power and Industry. The project aims to examine these themes using synaesthetic imagery, creating an immersive and multisensory experience for the viewer.

United in their passion for creativity in all its forms and with a fascination for industrial architecture and processes, the artists discovered a closer bond. As they shared and developed their practices, they discovered that their fathers had all had life-long careers in UK steel industry. The Power Project is therefore a very poignant gesture towards the industry that unfolded and became so important in their lives from a young age. The scale and all-encompassing nature of the steel industry will be accentuated further by the interaction between the exhibition and the viewer, and the ways in which people behave in the creative space.

An in-depth guided tour of Tata steelworks in Port Talbot and Forgemasters in Sheffield highlighted and further extended the wealth of collaborative possibilities. It also outlined the planning for potential touring exhibition.

The work has so far manifested itself in a series of collagraphs and limited edition screenprints, photography, film and an immersive sonic steelworks created at Martyn’s London studio, featuring his company Illustrious’ bespoke 3D sound technology called 3DAudioScape.

Work is scheduled to begin on a series of four giant textile hangings informed by an in-depth socio-political history of the areas, in part influenced by the tradition of trade union banners.

Power Project

Northern Soul classics from the heyday the ballroom whisper through Ware’s immersive three-dimensional soundscape, intertwined with human voices and industrial sounds taken from the factory floor.

Driving towards a sonic conclusion, the haunting piece comments on the ‘work hard, play hard’ cultures of Northern towns where work ruled the week and dancing ruled the weekend.

Church Of Rare Souls

Empath Machine

Illustrious created a huge 3D soundscape in the beautiful location of Tietgenkolegiet in Copenhagen to accompany the opening event for Strom Electronic Music Festival.

The spectacular hour-long immersive event featured The Danish Youth Orchestra, and Mike Sheridan's Band, performing a world-premiere work Drifting Through Time and Space, together with works by Gorecki, Arvo Part, Neil Gow and Sibelius.

Each of the building's 365 windows were independently lit as a 360 degree light show, accompanying the movement and dynamics of the live spatialized music.

Panorama - Copenhagen Strom Festival

The Prisoner Immersive Experience

Syria Soundscape

A selection of the music played at the end of each Electronically Yours podcast...

All music written and produced by Charles Stooke / Me, Charles

More of his work can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5gEpzfD8JXbpKgFiAB3qE8?si=iLBXkNWuS0SPv6yKzXt8Ew

If you can, please support the Electronically Yours podcast via our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/electronicallyours

Owned by The Moment

Abandoned Malls

Stumble

White You Are In Heaven Soundscape

Sweetly The Air Flew Overhead

Tokyo by Kenzo Soundscape

We Found Love In The 80s

Liquid Histories

Everything Old Is New Again

Auroral Synapse

The Beatles Experience

Science Museum F1 Exhibition

Illustrious Company (supported by Monitor Audio) presents the world-premiere of a major new 3D soundscape exhibition inspired by the Electronically Yours with Martyn Ware podcast entitled Adventures In The Electroverse…

The installation will premiere at NYC Culture Club, World Trade Center, between 5th May - 5th June 2024.

This piece embodies the culmination of over 250 hours of interviews and 3 years of research and analysis into the methods and inspirations of some of the world’s greatest musicians, artists, producers, actors, politicians, comedians and creators of all kinds… 

Drawing on Illlustrious’s immense experience of soundscape creation and audience engagement, this rich mix of music, sonic impressionism and the beauty and meaning of the human voice has been recombined into a unique psychedelic, immersive three-dimensional experience designed for your listening pleasure.

The entire soundscape is 60 minutes long, and has been prepared here in binaural format, so people can listen at home or on the go (best enjoyed on headphones).

Relax, stay a while, and let the Electroverse work its magic on your senses….

Adventures in The Electroverse

Empath Machine 

45 mins

Composed by Martyn Ware, Tim Wheater and Cherub Sanson

Kindly supported by Monitor Audio Group

 

Immerse yourself in this hypnotic three-dimensional soundscape featuring an electronic compositional response to the soundworld of naturally resonant acoustic instruments. The contrast between the natural and electronic worlds embodies paradoxically both a warning and a hope for a more considered technologically-enabled future and the inevitability of a new reality.

Sea Inside Us All 020316

Sea Inside Us All 5min Edit

This instrumental is a thank you to all our loyal fans for voting us 'Greatest Sheffield Band Of All Time'

Hope you like it

Martyn and Glenn - Heaven 17 xx

Honeymoon In NY 2 by Heaven 17

Paperface - Beggar&Co:Martyn Ware

Gimme Shelter Radio Promo

Heaven 17 with Hannah Jones - Gimme Shelter 1993 (Rare)

Composed by Martyn Ware in collaboration with artistic director David Bickerstaff, ‘Tales from the Bridge’ is a mesmerizing three-dimensional soundscape covering the entire length of the Millennium Bridge. It featured an hour-long looping immersive ambient electronic musical composition merged with an engaging spoken narrative written by the poet Mario Petrucci and voiced by Mia Austen and Steven Alexander, and the stunning ‘Water Night’ by Eric Whitacre.

The installation was created with endorsement of The Noise Abatement Society.

Tales from the Bridge

Before After

Heaven 17 - This Is Not My World

A compilation of bespoke compositions for a performance at a Sony Playstation party in 2000 by Illustrious Company (Vince Clarke and Martyn Ware) together with several special guests including Andy Bell. Performed live in 3D sound, and presented here in binaural (best experienced on headphones)

Illustrious Company

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