Darkfield Radio: Participant-Centred Experiences
Darkfield is a small immersive theatre company that specialises in 360 degree binaural audio performances that typically take place in darkness, inside repurposed shipping containers. Their innovative use of sound literally puts people at the centre of the performance, wherever they are.
Darkfield Radio broadcast mast
When the pandemic forced them to stop touring, the team developed Darkfield Radio, a mobile app that allowed them to create new works made to be experienced in people’s homes and easily accessible public spaces. Season One was launched in July 2020 and included three home-based audio experiences: Double, Visitors and Eternal, released one after another. Season Two was launched as a trilogy, entitled KNOT, in June 2021 and included outdoor locations.
Their latest show, Paradise, premiered at SXSW 2022 and could be experienced live or via the Darkfield Radio app. Darkfield Radio shows have featured in numerous international film and performing arts festivals, and have been distributed in four continents. The global availability of the Darkfield Radio has helped Darkfield to access wider international audiences, build a strong brand presence, and form various new international cross-sector partnerships.
25,000
5,734
19,483
We’ve come from theatre, but now we’re in this interesting space where we’re still recognised by the theatre community, but also recognised by the XR community.
Victoria Eyton, Producer
Logistics
Darkfield is not an NPO, but received project funding from Arts Council England and the Culture Recovery Fund to produce Double and Visitors. Eternal was commissioned by the Bram Stoker Festival in Ireland.
All the content was recorded in-house, and the production team also managed ticketing and distribution.
Tickets for time-specific audio experiences were sold on the company’s website. Tickets for Season One were priced at £5 (or £10 for the two people experiences). The Season Two trilogy was priced at £22.50 (£7.50 per performance).
Tickets were also sold through international festivals, as well as local partners in South-Korea, Taiwan, Australia and the USA, who bought the rights to distribute the shows in their territories.
Listen to a taster of Darkfield’s audio works and an interview with artistic directors David Rosenberg and Glen Neath, specially produced for this case study (12 mins) or download the transcript.
Publicity image for Double
Accessing global audiences
Season One was a lockdown hit and sold over 5,000 tickets in the UK and 19,000 internationally, the equivalent of 960 live container shows. Season Two was released in summer 2021, when the world was reopening, so sales were lower: 734 tickets in the UK, and 483 internationally.
Darkfield Radio shows featured at film and arts festivals including the XR sections of Venice International Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and Tribeca Film Festival. This exposure helped increase the visibility of the company’s other work: the online shows were used to market Darkfield’s live performances to bookers and agents who could not attend festivals in person. Appearing at prestigious international festivals also helped to attract a new film festival and XR audience.
Various new partnerships have been formed through this crossover activity. For example, in autumn 2021, the BBC commissioned Darkfield to produce a three-part audio experience that was launched on BBC Sound as a podcast.
In 2022, as new partnerships with international documentarists and NGOs has been formed, Darkfield has also moved into producing immersive audio documentaries.
Immersive audio treats all of the audience members as if they are at the center of the narrative.
David Rosenberg, Artistic Director
Embracing hybridity
Darkfield’s container shows have always been seamlessly hybrid, combining physical and imagined spaces, and blending their immersive audio with the atmospherics sound of the locations in which they are experienced. Their most recent shows also include voice-recoginition, further extending their shows’ mise-en-abyme between live and digital sound.
Creating shows that can be experienced at physical sites and online has added an extra dimension to their hybridity, and resulted in new synergies for Darkfield. For example, they have used Darkfield Radio performances as promotional material for their live work, to give agents and bookers an idea of their sound environments. In turn, when Eulogy premiered live at London Film Festival in autumn 2021, audience members received a flyer with a promo code for Darkfield Radio, encouraging the live audiences to engage with other Darkfield experiences at home.
Darkfield’s lesson is clear: in a multi-platform world, creating live and online content is not a zero-sum game. Both can feed into each other, maximising distribution opportunities, and strengthening arts organisations’ brands.
Darkfield shows installed at Canary Wharf
Just did #DARKFIELD. First ‘theatre’ experience for ages. Not had anybody other than the two of us in the house since before lockdown and tonight it felt like there were others with us!
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