The Lightweight project from Impossible Arts is a portable, 4m-diameter translucent sphere which gives 360° imaging and surrounds it with sound.

The imagery is mesh-warped to counter the distortion caused by the curved surface and graded masks allow the separate images from four internally-mounted projectors to merge and create a single moving image that seamlessly fills the globe. It can handle a range of content including video effects, short films, ‘streamers’ (sets of images which dance and spin around the entire surface), giant satellite images of the earth, ‘lumi’ (music, sound and simple light effects operating in harmony) and even live Twitter steams.

The extraordinary visual impact of Lightweight required an audio system capable of delivering the same quality but which could be installed unobtrusively. Pro Audio Systems supplied a Meyer Sound set-up comprising six MM4-XPs and three MM-10 subwoofers, all of which are discretely integrated on or within the structure facing outwards through 360°.

Lightweight is the brainchild of Chris Squire: ‘The discreet physical size of the speakers mean they are almost invisible in operation, helping enhance the formal simplicity of the sphere, leaving the purity of this elemental form with little clutter or distraction around it,’ he explains. ‘The speakers provide high-quality sound all around the structure which can be temporarily installed in a wide range of situations that has recently included a stone-paved urban courtyard, a shingle beach, an indoor arena and a cliff-top field’.

‘The sound itself is controlled by a bespoke programme that was created for us by musician and programmer Oliver Larkin, at York University Music Research Centre. The software application controls up to 12 different sound and music sources at a time, and they are played through up to ten loudspeakers placed in the round’.

‘Each source can be independently controlled with live adjustment of the 360° placement or azimuth of each sound, the spread or diffusion of that sound between loudspeakers, and the independent gain of each source. This allows us to move sound around the structure in time with the images that appear on it, for instance, or for image and sound to speed up or slow down in tandem’.

‘Overall I love the way that all the technological complexity becomes invisible to crowds who encounter of the sphere – someone said “magical and mesmerising”, and that just about sums it up’.