Go inside The Shed’s short-lived Sonic Sphere installation with The New York Times

2023-07-06T17:26:00-04:00

“It’s about a change in consciousness that leaves a memory,” [Ed] Cooke said of the project. “Can people have an experience where they touch some new territory of consciousness, not in a way that is like an altered state, but one that actually leaves a trace?”

The 50-ton space, which is suspended some 34 feet above the ground, has a capacity of 250 people and was promoted by co-designer Merijn Royaards as a “sensory laboratory that [...] bends time, expands consciousness, and punctures our perception of reality” at the project’s announcement in early May.

Video courtesy of The Shed/YouTube

Its design was supposedly inspired by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kugelauditorium from 1970 and includes a JBL sound system for special 45-minute ticketed performances. The venue closes on July 30th, with a return to New York planned for next year. Speaking of their intent for the $2 million project, Royaards' colleague Ed Cooke told the Times, “We want to give [people] something magical.”

The Shed debuts Sonic Sphere suspended musical feature

2023-05-09T13:17:00-04:00

The Shed at New York City’s Hudson Yards has unveiled plans for a new, temporary 65-foot spherical concert hall feature to be placed inside the arts venue’s McCourt performance space this summer.

The space is the product of architectural designers Ed Cooke, Merijn Royaards, and Nicholas Christie and has previously been enacted at the 2022 Burning Man festival and ten other venues.

Lounge-type seating is combined with a listening platform that's suspended 34 feet off the ground. Standing sections and a netted center complete the spatial design, with a capacity for 250 persons, a JBL sound system, and lighting design from Polina Zakh. The space was supposedly inspired by Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 1970 Kugelauditorium for the World Expo in Japan that same year.

Royaards explains: “My first experience of clubbing was during a cold winter in early ’90s Rotterdam. The interference patterns of visual, sonic, and kinetic waveform transmissions that flooded the dance floor and enveloped me we...

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Go inside The Shed’s short-lived Sonic Sphere installation with The New York Times

The Shed debuts Sonic Sphere suspended musical feature