As COVID-19 continues to disrupt the arts industry across the globe, innovative UK company Darkfield are launching in New Zealand with their visionary new audio experience DOUBLE, opening Tuesday 1 September. Brought to Aotearoa by Australia's Realscape Productions, DOUBLE will allow Kiwis to take part in a critically-acclaimed, chilling, and immersive encounter within their bubbles, regardless of the country's COVID alert level status. All you need is a mobile device, headphones - and a friend...
There is no easy way to describe what I have just experienced. To sit at a kitchen table across from someone, look at them, then close your eyes for twenty minutes as an apps audio plays havoc with your senses. The structure alone of this experience is unnervingly unique. Recreating that feeling of sensory deprivation that you may have experienced while playing on a Virtual Reality set; where blocking your visual field allows you to be transported somewhere now, no longer aware of the dimensions of your actual location.
Darkfield Radio has formed a scintillating and chilling experience that temporarily leads to unease, anxiety, and distrust of the person sitting directly opposite you. A person you know incredibly well...or do you. The experience plays with reality, using the unknown to twist your perceptions about elements you were previously confident about.
The audio is incredibly well-produced, with a storyline that turns from a soothing delve into your own interpersonal relationships, and spirals out of control down a rabbit hole of uncertainty. The quality of the audio cannot be downplayed. this is not a simple left and right stereo experience. This is a cinematic 360-degree adventure of unanticipated--but welcomed--depth; all with your eyes kept firmly shut.
DOUBLE calls for the best over-the-head headphones that you can procure, and I would even go as far as to recommend a sleeping mask too if you have one. Something that will allow you to sit in the darkness, with no visual or aural stimuli from your direct surroundings beyond your memory of them. While it will work fine with earbuds and your eyes closed, the experience works best with as little background noise as possible.
So difficult to explain without ruining the experience, the knowledge that the person sitting opposite you is receiving different audio, it plays with your mind, and the aural display starts to affect your other senses. The shadows in your mind's eye start to move, and your grasp of what is real and what is fabricated begin to blur.
DOUBLE is exquisite. A must-experience performance that will leave you breathless and covered in goosebumps. As for what you can expect in terms of content? All I can say is, don't leave your glass of water too close to the edge of the table... A cinematic performance for the mind that will have you absolutely yearning for more.
DOUBLE opens Tuesday 1 September 2020.
Session times: Tues, Thurs, Fri and Sat at 8pm, 10pm and 11pm.
Tickets are available via the Darkfield website
Price: $10
Tickets are available via the Darkfield website
Price: $10