Rhyality Immersive Art Hall

Overview
The Rheinfall is one of the largest waterfalls in Europe and attracts thousands of visitors every year. Located nearby, inside a redeveloped SIG industrial complex, the Rhyality Immersive Art Hall tells the story of the Rheinfall year round with a fully immersive audio/visual experience designed for visitors of all ages. The project was initially envisioned by artist and film producer Beat Toniolo, financed by local tourism entrepreneur Hanspeter Weder, and developed and realized in a highly collaborative process led by Dost Architektur GmbH. It is currently operated and curated by art director Devon Miles.

Program
The WSDG Team was tasked with room acoustics and electroacoustics engineering for the project, most critically designing the immersive audio system that would give a 360-degree experience of the Rheinfall in all of its natural beauty. The team worked alongside DOST to realize the vision of an intuitive, immersive experience for the film that could also be reconfigured to allow the space to serve different programming needs.

Design
The acoustic design of Rhyality faced an interesting challenge initially – how to design a room with the proper acoustics without the projection screens on the walls causing unwanted reflections. The WSDG Team recommended a special theatrical fabric manufactured by Gerriets that was suitable for projection but also acoustically transparent, allowing them to build absorption treatment and loudspeakers in-between the wooden studs behind the projection screens. The ceiling is finished with a solid absorptive acoustic plaster that serves as a projection surface as well.

The  loudspeaker layout for Rhyality was created in partnership with Holophonix and utilizes 98 speakers in total for a fully immersive audio experience. Two layers, one at 1.2m and the second at 3.2m height, are provided behind the walls plus the ceiling loudspeakers for a third height level. All loudspeakers feature a coaxial design to allow an accurate and unusually wide off-axis response. Due to the Dante Backbone as well as the acoustically transparent projection screens, the addition of loudspeakers can be easily achieved when required. The Holophonix processor allows for up to 128 playback channels and is capable of all relevant immersive algorithms such as Wave Field Synthesis (WFS), Ambisonics and others along with a powerful multichannel algorithmic reverberation engine. The installation of the system was carried out by Bild+Ton.