“I had heard about binaural technology and techniques from other students who had used this method of recording sound in previous theatre performances,” she explains. “I had only seen it used live on stage once before, in a smaller and more experimental performance at the school. Therefore I wanted to go even further and try the technology in my graduation performance, which is the biggest and last production before graduating.”
Entitled
Good For Nothing, Schleimann’s graduation performance had no script and was based entirely around improvisation, with themes that revolved around transhumanism, transformation, sensory deprivation, nature and human revolution against technology. The director was fellow student Jennifer Vedsted Christiansen, while other students made up the cast and the design and production teams.
“I wanted to use binaural sound to research questions such as how to create a theatre experience where hearing is used as a sense rather than a function and how to use sound to create a sensual experience,” Schleimann says. “I was also interested in the relation between an individual enclosed experience and a collective and spatial experience.”
DPA’s new
4560 Binaural Headset Microphone seemed ideal for Schleimann’s production and her University lecturer Eddy Bøgh Brixen, who is closely involved with the Danish manufacturer, arranged for her to use the prototype.