Olympic Vertigo – Sound for a VR Installation in the Olympiapark

The Olympiapark in Munich is a place with two memories that cannot be separated. There are the Games, the concerts, the summer evenings by the lake. And there is 1972, the attack, the rupture. Both lie on the same lawn.

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Games the artist duo M+M built a VR installation for exactly this place, and I did the sound for it. “Olympic Vertigo” stood from 2 to 9 July 2022 on the gravel area by the Olympiasee, below the Olympia swimming hall. You stepped onto a round platform, put on a headset, and afterwards stood in the same spot, only not quite.

Why the music played the lead role

What you see in the headset is the reconstructed park, and in it human-sized praying mantises move to the beat. After a while the Olympic Tower collapses, the creatures vanish, the dust settles, the tower stands again, and everything starts over.

The core of the work was the music. The artists’ idea was to lay the park’s decades around the viewer as sectors: the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and 2010s. Five slices, each with its own version of the same music, same tempo, same bar, different instrumentation. Turn your head and you walk through time without the music ever starting again.

That sounds like a simple rule, and it isn’t when you build it. If five versions play at once and you only emphasise the direction of view, you easily hear a mush of everything. Switch hard instead and you hear the switch rather than the music. The way in between runs through a focus parameter that raises one direction and lowers the others without removing them entirely. The surroundings stay complete, and attention gets a direction.

For this to work, the five versions had to fit together. All follow the same arc: first only the bassline, then the typical elements of the decade, then denser and denser. And no important element was allowed to appear in two decades. If a synthesizer sounds the same in the 90s as in the 2010s, you no longer know where you are when you turn around.

How an art project became a question about headphones

Every production like this has a part that concepts rarely mention but that decides the result. The installation ran on several standalone headsets at once, outdoors in the park, in daylight and with ambient noise. What works in the studio is far from working there.

Bass was the biggest issue. Music that lives from its pulse needs substance down low, and that is exactly what mobile headphones on a headset deliver worst. Add the surroundings: a park in July is not quiet. So we tested and chose clip-on headphones, attached firmly to the headset so they don’t get lost as visitors change. For an installation that runs for days with nobody permanently looking after it, that matters.

The collapsing tower was the second place where mobile devices take their revenge. First it tips, then come the free fall and the impact. A collapse normally lives on frequencies you feel rather than hear, and those are missing on clip-on headphones outdoors. So the force had to come from ranges that are still there on small playback: the crunching and tearing in the mids, the sudden absence of the music, and the silence afterwards while the dust settles. An event feels big when something different came before and after.

The mantises had to stay audibly animals. Anything that sounds too human takes the realism out of such a scene, because the brain immediately looks for the person. The location helped: on gravel every movement makes noise, and light, tripping steps in the gravel coming towards you need no explanation. For their chirping I had suggested timing it to the tempo of the music so that they blend into the piece.

And then there is a quirk of installations you never get in film. The piece runs in a loop, some visitors stay on the platform for two cycles, and the staff stand next to it eight hours a day. What sounds strong the first time can be unbearable the fourth time, especially a striking sound at the same moment every time. That is a reason to hold effects back rather than push them.

What came of it

The installation ran daily for a week, from two to ten pm on weekdays and from noon at weekends, on several headsets at once, in the middle of the park and free of charge. When I dropped by myself, it went down well with visitors.

Concept and artistic realisation were by M+M, that is Marc Weis and Martin De Mattia. Technical realisation was by Jörg Liebold, project coordination by Tanja Schmitt-Fumian, both from Macromedia University in Munich, which was involved as a partner. The music is by Polly Lapkovskaja and Mikko Gaestel, the metalwork of the platforms by Michael Ganser. I was responsible for the sound. There are deliberately no audio samples: M+M see the music as a prototype they want to keep developing, and I respect that.

What this project shows well applies to every installation: the sound is what steers the experience. Take the directional music out of “Olympic Vertigo” and you are left with a pretty picture with techno on top. Leave it in and visitors turn on their own and notice that the place holds several times at once. The same question arises for any application that runs on a headset, such as the VR prototype about the Dornier Do X flying boat. It works in a similar way in What Lies Beyond the Woods, where position in space carries the story.

Frequently asked questions about sound for VR installations

Which headphones suit an outdoor VR installation? Headphones that are firmly attached to the headset and don’t get lost when visitors change. They reproduce little bass, so the mix has to work without low frequencies.

How do you hear in VR where you are looking? Through a focus parameter: the direction of view is raised, everything else is lower but never silent. The space stays complete and attention still has a target.

What is different about an installation in continuous operation compared with film? The piece runs in a loop, visitors often stay for several cycles and staff all day. Striking effects wear out quickly and should be used sparingly.

Planning an installation with VR or headsets on site?

What works in the studio rarely works outdoors unchanged. Let’s talk early about playback, headphones and operation, not just at setup.