The Seadragon’s Lair

The Seadragon's Lair is an epic 360° adventure transforming the State Library’s majestic domed La Trobe Reading Room into the underwater world of Port Phillip Bay. The whole room "descends" under the waters of the bay, immersing the audience into a fantastic world of creatures, all filmed by Sheree and her colleagues in the waters surrounding Melbourne.

Working with MAV, I designed the soundscape to rotate around 4 speaker pairs installed in the balcony, with 2 more speaker pairs up in the sixth-floor balcony, and 2 speaker pairs and 2 sub-woofers in the central podium. The soundscape and music composition was designed to completely immerse the audience through the emotional impact of melody and directional effects, making something that would appeal to children and adults alike. I used many different sources of underwater sounds and my own electronic composition layered in response to the amazing environments and animal movements captured by Sheree.

It is of course impossible to capture the sonic experience of this work in a stereo mix. The six-storey domed room is as much an instrument in this piece as it is a canvas. The soundscape was designed to work with the resonating qualities of the room - through the six minutes of the work, the frequencies build and intensify. I deliberately worked with frequencies that the room would enhance, without losing definition - to create a sense of the muted aural qualities of being underwater. Additional speakers on the top balcony enabled me to create upward and downward movement, as the room descends and then rises. This spatial separation of speakers also enabled me to make the most of the above water sequence, with birds high up in the rafters.