Full Sail Stories

After a decade of hard work, Full Sail Arts Ambassador and composer Keith Lay recently hosted the first true “Distance Music” event on the campus grounds. The event combined music, acoustic physics, and ancient principles of geometry to create an immersive, interactive audio experience. The ambitious endeavor was funded by a grant from United Arts of Central Florida, a local arts agency dedicated to raising and distributing funds for the area’s arts, science and history organizations, and the presentation utilized both the facilities of the Full Sail campus and the assistance of multiple staff and faculty members.

According to Keith: “Nothing like this has been done before – anywhere. Full Sail was quite adventurous to support this experiment.”

Keith presented a short keynote address in Full Sail's Treehouse venue before leading the audience to the parking lot to begin. The acoustic concert event, titled “The Flower of Life,” involved 23 musicians from the award-winning Brass Band of Central Florida; the musicians were split into groups of three and spread throughout the lot. Keith also incorporated the sounds of distant glockenspiels and train horns, which he controlled from a central command station worn on his back. The musical elements stayed in time through a combination of radio-controlled metronomes, synchronized signals, and human conductors.

As the bands performed the synchronized arrangement, the audience explored the lot to experience the effects of distance on sound. The combined musical elements coupled with the attendees’ movement “created a space-time environment where each audience member’s position generates unique timings and rhythms, akin to exploring different realms within a virtual world,” says Keith.