Designed to be ‘a showcase of creative talent blended with the power of advanced digital technologies’, the first hybrid 5G Festival will be broadcast live directly to audiences at remote locations from world-leading venues
As audiences increasingly accept remote, digital and blended experiences, the 5G Festival imagines the ‘festival of the future’ when artists and audiences can gather and connect both in person and online, with the power of 5G to communicate the ‘liveness’ of the experience.
Led by advanced digital technology centre and 5G specialist Digital Catapult, the initiative brings together the Warner Music Group; the Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival (working with Brighton 5G testbed partner Wired Sussex); telecoms company and sponsor of The O2 and O2 Academy venues O2; Metropolis Studios, immersive audio and live streaming specialist Sonosphere; the Audiotonix group; and digital technology companies Mativision (5G, 360° immersive live streaming and distribution) and LiveFrom (blockchain ticketing).
As part of the wider £200m 5G testbeds and trials programme (5GTT) funded by the UK Government, the 5G Festival will produce a 5G powered, live immersive collaboration platform for artists. Together, the ability of 5G to transmit with low latency and in ultra-high bandwidth and Mativision’s network-ready 360° content distribution platform support immersive visual feeds and an integrated live stream for distribution to allow physically distanced artists to produce immersive live, collaborative performances across multiple venues.
In practice, this means musicians can perform together from different venues at the same time, completely in-sync with one another and global audiences can be reached via their preferred device and in-venue experiences.
The core 5G infrastructure is based on Digital Catapult’s 5G Testbed, which spans three sites across Brighton and London, and offers technologically complete end-to-end, standards compliant, commercial and open source network services. This will be interconnected with O2’s public 5G network to support the scale of the project.
The festival will also explore opportunities for digital transformation and capability building for the UK’s live music, festivals and events sector. Finally, The O2 Lab will develop a customer-facing mobile application for the project.
In March 2021, an Audiotonix team led by live sound and immersive specialist teams from DiGiCo and Klang:technologies and AoIP network specialists from Calrec, along with Mativision and Sonosphere conducted the first trials at Brighton Dome to experiment with the effects of audio latency on the invited performers’ ability to play together. The amount of delay was dialled up and down to showcase the power of the technology and test the musicians’ and singers’ ability to cope with latency and determine what the delay limits where before a performance fell apart. ‘The trials produced fascinating, and some unexpected, results,’ says Sonosphere’s Andy Robinson.
‘Bringing musicians from around the world together to collaborate and create new music remotely has been a dream of mine for years,’ says Sonosphere Commercial Director, Jamie Gosney. ‘This project will make that possible and I couldn’t be more excited that Sonosphere is part of it.’
‘We look forward to exploring how 5G can help our core purpose – to inspire and enable artists to be their most creative and to champion the power of the arts to enrich and change lives,’ says Andrew Comben, Chief Executive, Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival. ‘The 5G Festival will enable us to work with artists to collaborate remotely and develop new types of digitally enhanced live experiences in our venues, at festivals and for audiences at home or wherever they are in the world. Together with colleagues at Wired Sussex, we will be engaging with the creative industries in Brighton & Hove to support their innovation and resilience to design and develop technology to shape the future of the arts.’
‘As one of the world’s leading recording studios, our ability to help develop and facilitate artist collaboration to the highest quality will always be part of our core services,’ says Gavin Newman, Brand Director at Metropolis Studios. ‘Enabling artists to connect remotely over 5G so that they can write, produce, record, rehearse and perform together in an immersive environment is a compelling proposition. Metropolis are also perfectly placed to broadcast live artist performances and guest collaborations over a 5G network to partner venues O2 and Brighton Dome as part of the 5G Festival, and also to viewers at home supporting unique branded VR fan experiences.’
‘When the opportunity to take an active role in the 5G Festival was presented to Audiotonix, we jumped at the chance,’ adds Audiotonix Chief Executive Officer, James Gordon. ‘This project will allow a number of our pro audio brands to work together with other leading technology partners to help pioneer the next steps in media creation, delivery and audience experience. Being part of a project that will develop new event opportunities, and help revitalise the welcomed return of audience attended performances, will be a valuable experience for our team and a real positive as we look to the future and 2021’.
‘The 5G Festival is a natural evolution for Mativision,’ says founder and CEO, Anthony Karydis. ‘We have been producing and distributing live performances as immersive experiences to global audiences for more than a decade, and in the past three years, through our involvement in 5G Trials in the UK and Europe, we have 5G-enabled our proprietary immersive content distribution platform. With 5G Festival, we have the opportunity to develop and deliver a game-changing platform which will offer artists the capability to create and produce music without the limitation of their location and deliver to audiences new, uniquely engaging ways to experience and interact with live performances.’
The next trials, which will involve musicians in two venues approximately 50 miles apart, will take place during June 2021, with a final showcase event planned for early 2022.
