Portfolio: immersive work

Gareth Fry is a multi award winning sound designer, best known for his cutting-edge work in theatre, on productions such as Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and Complicité’s The Encounter. He has also designed events and exhibitions, from the V&A’s landmark David Bowie Is exhibition, to being asked by Danny Boyle to design the sound effects for the Opening Ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games. His expertise in binaural sound has also led to extensive work in VR / AR / XR, which has featured at the Sundance, Tribeca and Venice Film Festivals. Projects include:

Recent work includes:
In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats - VR piece for East City Films and Coventry City of Culture
Museum of Austerity - AR piece for ETT, premiered at London Film Festival
Adult Children - VR piece for Donmar Warehouse, premiered at London Film Festival
Stones of Venice - spatial audio 360 film for 59 Productions, Rambert and Manchester International Festival. Watch here.
Draw Me Close - VR project, selected for the Tribeca and Venice Film Festivals.

Gareth is represented by Clare Fox: http://www.clarefox.co.uk.

VIOLA’S ROOM - PUNCHDRUNK

An audio-driven journey through a moonlit fever dream.

Barefoot and wearing headphones, audiences feel their way through a labyrinthine installation as an unseen narrator reveals a story of innocence lost and obsession unleashed.

Forsaken - Outernet London

FORSAKEN was designed for the breathtaking, floor to ceiling wrap-around screens at the Outernet venue in central London, Europe's largest digital exhibition space and recently crowned the UK’s most visited tourist attraction. It premiered in January 2024, showing until the end of February. It then returned to the venue in July due to popular demand, running until the end of September.

Platinum winner in the 'Live Entertainment: Immersive & Mixed Reality' category at the 2024 LIT Entertainment Awards

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats

In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is an interactive virtual reality experience by award-winning filmmaker Darren Emerson, inviting audiences to go in search of an illegal rave, one night in Coventry in 1989. From poster-strewn bedrooms to pirate radio stations, police headquarters to secret warehouses, you’ll step-into the shoes of rave culture pioneers as you go in search of the party.
Built in Unity using Steam Audio. For East City Films and Coventry City of Culture. Also shown as part of the BFI’s London Film Festival Expanded.

Adult Children

Set during lockdown, and staged in a scanned replica of the Donmar Warehouse theatre auditorium, this poignant short 360 film invites us to explore the ways in which our actions are tangentially connected even when we are apart. Adult Children is a unique collaboration between leading theatre artists and groundbreaking XR creatives. Combining their talents, playwright Ella Hickson, XR/theatre director Sacha Wares and digital innovators ScanLAB Projects have created a new form of 360 theatre that explores the psychogeography of solitude, probes the nuances of social responsibility and evokes the feelings of loss that characterise the COVID-19 era for us all.

Premiered at the London Film Festival

”Gareth Fry’s spatial sound design is remarkable” Whatsonstage

Museum of Austerity

A mixed reality exhibition that records personal stories of disabled benefit claimants who died between 2010-2020. Combining verbal testimony, original music and ground-breaking volumetric capture, this exhibition invites audiences to contemplate close-up the human impact of austerity. Co-produced by English Touring Theatre, the National Theatre Storytelling Studio and Trial & Error, this powerful installation combines the skills of theatre/XR director Sacha Wares with the in-depth knowledge of John Pring, editor of Disability News Service.

Previewed at the London Film Festival and IDFA DocLab

*** Winner of IDFA DocLab award for Immersive Non-Fiction ***

Facebook Portal

I created sounds for the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child AR experience on the Facebook Portal device

Stones of Venice - 360 film with spatial audio

I sound designed this short 360 film with 59 Productions, Rambert and Manchester International Festival, that was developed from the stage production City of Venice. It uses a combination of motion capture, virtual worlds, music from A Winged Victory for the Sullen and spatial audio, to tell the story of an encounter between Kubla Khan and Marco Polo.

Listen on headphones!

The YouTube spatial audio version will play on Chrome, Firefox or Edge on a Mac or PC. You just get a vanilla stereo version on Safari. It also plays well in the YouTube app on iPhone and Android, but if you play back from Chrome, Firefox or Safari on those phones you get plain vanilla stereo. Also plays well on Quest YouTubeVR app.

unReal City - DreamThinkSpeak and Access All Areas

unReal City blends intimate live performance with virtual and mixed reality, using Oculus Quest, Unity and Oculus Spatialisation, alongside QLab and a multi-channel speaker system.
Premiered at BAC just before Covid-19 lockdown, and subsequently in 2022 at the Brighton Festival.

All Kinds of Limbo - Sundance Film Festival and Tate Modern

We created a new iteration of All Kinds of Limbo, which opened last year at the National Theatre, to play at the Sundance Film Festival, and then at the Tate Modern,

Bastille’s Doom Days - Still Avoiding Tomorrow

I created the sound design for the launch of Bastille’s album, Doom Days. Working with writer Charlotte Bogard Macleod, and my team of Mike Winship, Ella Wahlstrom and Helen Skiera, we developed and designed three stories, told simultaneously using binaural sound over wireless headphones. The stories and sound design interwove themes and lyrics from the album with a binaural soundscape and Bastille’s music. After the 40 minute performance, the audience moved next door where Bastille performed the full album live.

NME review

All Kinds of Limbo - National Theatre’s Wolfson Gallery & Sundance Festival - VR experience

This is an immersive performance piece using room-scale VR, volumetric capture and holographic projection. Composed by Nibiya Brandon and Raffy Bushman. Directed by Toby Coffey. The installation is in the Wolfson Gallery within the National Theatre, and in 2020 visited the Sundance Festival.

Rekorder-land Magic Leap experience

I created the sound design (with associate Mike Winship) for this mixed reality experience at the Underbelly on London’s South Bank this summer. It uses a mix of strategically placed speakers and spatialised audio within Magic Leap headsets to transport visitors to a magical forest….

Anna Meredith: Five Telegrams: Sender / Receiver: First Night of the Proms and EIF Opening

I worked with 59 Production’s Richard Slaney and Anna Meredith on her piece Five Telegrams. The night before the First Night of the Prom, we previewed her composition, with projection mapped visuals on the exterior of the Royal Albert Hall.

Then using recordings of that performance, and from Anna’s actual First Night of the Prom (which had visuals mapped on the inside of the Royal Albert Hall), we edited and mixed a version to play for the opening of the Edinburgh International Festival.

Tunnel Visions: Array

I worked with 59 Production’s Richard Slaney, on the recording, editing, mixing, system design and diffusion of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Karawane for Orchestra and Chorus. Starting off as a recording of the BBC Symphony Orchestra I created a sound design using 40 speakers and 20 sub-bass speakers spaced out down the Beech Street tunnel in central London (the dingy tunnel that leads to the Barbican).

Expedia 3D audio campaign

I worked with Create Future, Expedia and Brand USA to plan their Sound Travels campaign, highlighting aspects of a variety of American cities and locations to encourage people to visit. It eventually involved location recording in binaural sound across the USA by Clatter&Din

Land Rover Discovery Adventures

I recorded, edited and mixed this 7-part podcast family drama for Cecilia and Mindshare, working closely with them and Land Rover to create an innovative podcast recorded in binaural audio, on location across the UK with a host of actors, presenters, explorers and sports personalities.

Hear Their There Here

iPhone/Android app-based sound-walk around Brooklyn Bridge Park for St Ann's Warehouse. Director: Geoff Sobelle

Draw Me Close

VR experience for the NT's Immersive Storytelling Studio. Selected for the Tribeca and Venice Film Festivals.

Philips Sleep Light 

I produced US and German versions of a binaural experience to demonstrate Philips Sleep Light products, for M-IS

My Name is Peter Stillman VR

I created the sound design for this VR piece, which placed the user in the mind of Peter Stillman, a character from Paul Auster's novel The City of Glass. It was featured at Manchester's HOME, the Lyric Hammersmith and at the Venice Film Festival. For 59 Productions.

Bose Mercedes F1 Garage experience

I recorded and produced the sounds for this Synergy Sponsorship project for Bose, with Unit9, utilising multiple ambisonic and binaural sound recordings in a unique VR immersive environment.

Volvo Sound Affects campaign

Binaural recording and mixing for Volvo and M-is's Sound Affects campagin, highlighting the quiet running of their new XC-90 Hybrid vehicle

United Nations Global Goals Launch

Working with 59 Productions, I created a ten minute sound design for this projected artwork which was projected on the United Nations headquartes in New York at the opening of the Geneal Assembly of world leaders.

Deloitte Ignite

Oxfam: Say No To Coal

I did the sound design for this animation for Oxfam. Animation was by Joseph Pierce (59 Productions). Music for the German and French versions was by Jeff Beal (House of Cards), and for the UK version was by Origamibiro. The English version is narrated by Simon Pegg.

Hampton Court 500 Rewind

Projection Mapping on Hampton Court Palace, Apring 2015

Vivid Live - Lighting the Sails 2014

Projection Mapping on the Sydney Opera House, Summer 2014