Sacred Environment
Sacred Environment is a live VR oratorio created with Dutch-Australian composer Kate Moore, premiering at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam during the Holland Festival Proms. A VR performer walks a dream-track through the Australian bush guided by music, indigenous songlines, and the memory of a landscape held sacred for thousands of years.
“Moore invited Van Leer to Australia, where they took a three-hour drive north from Sydney, along the Great North Road into the Yengo mountain area, a place of great spiritual significance to indigenous Australians.”
Premiering at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Holland Festival Proms 2017
carrying the bush into the concert hall
Commissioned by the Holland Festival and NTR Radio, Sacred Environment brings together the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the Netherlands Radio Choir, soprano Alex Oomens, and didgeridoo player Lies Beijerinck in a single continuous act of listening. At the centre of the stage stands VR performer Esther Mugambi, moving through a virtual landscape built from lidar scans of the Hunter Valley in New South Wales; original territory of the Dharug, Darkinjung and Wonnarua people. Her journey is projected on a vast screen for the audience to follow: a private vision made collectively visible.
The lidar scans transform the Australian bush into luminous point clouds with thousands of coordinates holding the shape of cliffs, caves, and ancient trees in digital suspension. What appears on stage is not a simulation of nature. It is nature returned in another form: the spirits of a landscape carried 17,000 kilometres and released inside the walls of a concert hall.
The work grew from a question that has no clean answer: what does sacred mean in a world that has largely stopped believing in the sacred? Not as a theological problem, but as a lived one. Where do we go when we need to be in the presence of something larger than ourselves? Sacred Environment does not answer this. It creates a live space in which the question can be felt.
Capturing digital scans of parts of the Australian bush with spiritual significance
Ruben Van Leer making lidar scans
“In her epic post-minimalist style, Moore suggested grand vistas. On a giant screen, Ruben Van Leer’s pointillist laserscan images of Hunter Valley in Australia formed an eye-catching visual counterpart.”
Lidar scan of a dead Eucalyptus tree
Lidar scan of honey comb cave scan
Sound reactive point cloud VR visualiser tool
respecting the bush spirits
“With great privilege, Uncle John and Uncle Phil, two elders from the local community, took us on hikes along the Great North Road not far from Sydney. Kate's compositions are inspired by the grandeur of this overwhelming landscape, and by the cultural meanings this part of Australia carries; it is also where she grew up. Both Uncles and Kate introduced me to some of the magical sites: steep cliffs, honeycomb caves, places of deep spiritual significance around Mount Yengo. These were also the sites I scanned with lidar; the same landscapes that became the VR worlds I designed for the stage. Taking these natural spirits back to Amsterdam in digital form, my goal was to turn the walls of the Concertgebouw into the endless bush. I am grateful this project gave me a glimpse into some of the hidden meanings that animistic Australian ancestors preserved; meanings that feel urgently relevant for my Western, broadband generation today.” —Ruben Van Leer
VR performer Esther Mugambi standing in the middle of the audience
Soprano Alex Oomens, didgeridoo player Lies Beijerinck and conductor Brad Lubman
POV projection of realtime VR environments
credits
| Composer | Kate Moore |
| Visual Artist | Ruben Van Leer |
| Dramaturgist | Martin Butler |
| Performance | |
| VR Performer | Esther Mugambi |
| Soprano | Alex Oomens |
| Musicians | |
| Didgeridoo | Lies Beijerinck |
| Orchestra | Radio Filharmonisch Orkest |
| Choir | Groot Omroepkoor |
| Technology | |
| Tech Programmer | Victor Martins |
| VR Interfacing | Boompje Studio |
| Lidar Scans | Andrew Borscz |
| 360 Video | Peejee Doorduin |
| Art & Styling | |
| Stylist | Mai Marie Dijksma |
| Bush Guides | Uncles John & Phil |
| Production | |
| Production | Holland Festival & Truth.io |
| Programmer | Jochem Valkenburg |
| Sponsor | Google Arts & Culture |
| With Support of | Amsterdam Fund for the Arts |
| Concert Hall | Het Concertgebouw |
filmmaker & media-artist
