The first European trial of the itinerant orchestra: “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Andrea Molino

The 9th of November, ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’, the latest work by the Turin composer and conductor Andrea Molino, took place in the Gran Salone dei Ricevimenti of Palazzo Madama in Turin in front of more than 100 invited people; a musical show for four itinerant voices and saxophones through the streets of the city center and an instrumental ensemble present in the hall that played together live thanks to the technological solution provided by 5G-TOURS. The event is the result of the collaboration between the City of Turin, Fondazione Torino Musei, Ericsson, LiveU, Rai and TIM, in the context of the UC5 “Remote and distributed video production”.
Musicians and performers moving on different streets of the city were able to connect live, with a central direction, thus creating a series of engaging musical and theatrical interactions as if they were all in the same place in front of the orchestra conductor. More in detail, the Ensemble Fiarì, directed by Marilena Solavagione, interacted from the Gran Salone dei Ricevimenti of Palazzo Madama in real time and with a synchronization of musical precision (therefore with a margin of error of less than 3 hundredths of a second) with the four saxophonists of the ‘SaXemble’ of Zurich and four young actors who have just graduated from the Teatro Stabile Theater School. The itinerant performers, each followed by a live 5G video camera, moved freely in the spaces of Piazza Castello, gathered in front of the entrance of Palazzo Madama and, following different paths, entered in order to reach the Gran Salone where they finished the performance together with the other musicians, thus highlighting not only the precision of the remote coordination but also the artistic and technological compatibility between the two situations.
‘Thanks to this experiment – explains Andrea Molino – it has been possible to highlight how the use of the most advanced communication technologies meet a new idea of live entertainment. In this case, 5G technology is not only ‘at the service’ of the spectacular idea, but actively and integratedly contributes to the definition of a real new artistic language, effectively making possible a new way of conceiving a live event.’
In fact, the technological solution developed by 5G-TOURS in terms of remote television production system and 5G network coverage has not only allowed the resolution of fundamental technical problems, such as the live synchronization of performers who are also very distant from each other and the need for extremely precise communication between of them and the central direction, but, consequently, it has made available situations and possibilities up to now in fact never usable and capable by opening up a new and unexplored world to artistic thought.
The remote television production system, developed by the Rai Research Center with the collaboration of the Turin Production Center and the support of LiveU, made possible to receive the flows coming from the 5G mobile cameras and the management of the signals necessary to guarantee the synchronization of the musicians and actors in motion. All the data streams were processed in real time in the Control Room to reconstruct the virtual presence of the itinerant artists for the audience in the Gran Salone, obtaining a perfectly synchronized overall performance. The live performance, appreciated by the audience in the hall, was also transmitted using 5G broadcast as a trial of the UC4 “High quality video service distribution” (see the related news here).
The 5G network solution developed at Palazzo Madama by TIM with Ericsson technology and in collaboration with Fondazione Torino Musei, has constantly guaranteed high speeds and very low latencies, in order to ensure simultaneous transmission of various high-definition video streams from the cameras to the Control Room. This solution, compliant with the 3GPP standard, is extremely flexible both in terms of use (enabling new innovative services in the museum sector) and in terms of implementation. For Palazzo Madama, a UNESCO heritage site, ad-hoc installations were in fact designed using equipment and solutions that were perfectly integrated within the museum area while ensuring very high bandwidth and latency performances. A more detailed description of the 5G network solution of 5G-TOURS at Palazzo Madama can be found here.
The audience attending the event provided enthusiastic feedbacks about the experience and the echo over the media has been also really relevant (around 30 press releases, web and TV news), demonstrating the impacts and the effectiveness of the work performed by 5G-TOURS. The Councilor for the Innovation of Turin, Chiara Foglietta, commented: ‘The technologies enabled by 5G in the cultural sector, as demonstrated today by the 5G-TOURS project, are a possible driving force for promoting a new offer, for tourism and beyond, enriched, accessible and sustainable. The co-development and experimentation activities, in the context of European planning, represent a modus operandi that the City of Turin intends to pursue to be the protagonist of urban innovation and look to the future in all areas of life’.