Smode fills Cercle Odyssey immersive concerts with real-time visual power

The multimedia server and real-time compositing platform company Smode Tech has provided eight servers to this innovative project, organized by Cercle, of fifteen large-scale traveling 360º concerts.

From Mexico City to Los Angeles and Paris, with a total of thirty immersive concerts, Odyssey Circle has marked a turning point in live audiovisual production.

Organized by Circle, artistic movement that creates immersive musical experiences, this 360º world music tour combines live performances with real-time visuals, spatial audio, synchronicity and narrative.

With this vision, The project has required an unprecedented level of integration between interpretation, technology and environment. At the core of this live, multi-sensory experience there is the technology of Smode Tech media servers and real-time compositing platforms, driving generative visuals, composition and live playback on an immense projection surface.

Conceived by the French music platform Cercle, Odyssey emerges as a new type of 'nomadic' concert: monumental in scale, but intimate in its execution. The public entered a structure of 2.300 m², surrounded by screens 50 meters wide and 12 high on all sides, with the artist located in the center.

Every aspect of these immersive concerts has been designed to immerse the audience in a cohesive journey, from multi-layered audio and cinematic visuals to the diffusion of specific aromas.

“This is a new type of immersive and nomadic concert experience,” he explains. Mathieu Glissant, Cercle Odyssey visual creator-. We travel the world with a monumental installation: and immersive mobile space with giant screens, and central stage, spatial sound, synchronized aromas…all designed to offer a completely new multi-sensory experience. “The goal has been to reinvent the way people experience music at concerts.”.

Smode was selected to contribute its multimedia servers and real-time visual engine to the project., supplied by Middle Alabama, belonging to the French group Novelty, through its proprietary systems X-Real.

In total, eight media servers with Smode licenses managed twelve simultaneous 4K streams, guaranteeing the complex multi-screen projection. Video signals were transmitted via HDMI over fiber optic, with distribution systems Lightware to ensure a low latency delivery to laser projectors Panasonic (more details in Digital AV).

The difference between Cercle Odyssey and traditional concerts lies in the real-time nature of the entire performance.. Los visual contents were not previously rendered: were created, adapted and they synchronized live, making each concert a unique and unrepeatable event.

Smode allowed operators to control and modify media directly during each concert, responding to the needs and styles of each artist. The original content was supervised by Cercle and created in collaboration with the Paris studio Motion Palace, directed by Neels Castillon.

Each Cercle Odyssey concert has been a unique and specific creation, where artists like Ben Böhmer, My yellow, Max Richter, Monolink y Moby, inter alia, They contributed their individual musical style, supported by Smode to personalize the visual content of each performance.

Although they were used shared librariess as a starting point, these were continually reinterpreted and reorganized according to art direction thanks to Smode's versatile real-time compositing workflow.

The software offered two essential playback modes: a synchronized by timecode for precision sequences, and another live and interactive for improvised control. This duality gave the team freedom to respond dynamically to each concert., controlling parameters such as color, speed, intensity and orientation in real time.

Visuals were often fully generative, no external files: Smode's real-time media servers calculated live effects, allowing particle clouds, 3D sprites or nebulae will continually evolve to the rhythm of the music.

The visual operator Morgan Davodet controlled the live show using Smode as a central tool. As pointed out, content could be launched from a console or even manipulated using gestural interfaces, all within a system capable of maintaining a smooth performance, even in ultra high resolution 8K, along five synchronized projection surfaces.

The function of Smode 3D preview has been key during pre-production and the planning phase, as it allowed each concert environment to be visualized before the stage was physically built. This made it possible to test camera angles, transitions of sequences and spatial arrangements in advance, increasing creative efficiency and reducing on-site assembly time.

“Every concert is different, and each artist has specific needs -subraya Davodet-. Smode allows us to adapt the visual content of each performance without having to start from scratch. We can reconfigure, reinterpret and reorganize libraries according to artistic requirements”.

Specifically, This visual operator points out that “we have developed generative content with Smode to create visual bridges between reality and digital elements.”, which are fully modifiable in real time (color, speed, density, orientation) and we can control them through various interfaces, like a console or even a theremin for gestural interactions”.

In fact, all parameters can be adjusted live, "we can launch, modify and improvise during the show. For example, rotate a virtual camera around a particle cloud, adjust intensity live, add effects like 'luminous mosquitoes', etc. And everything remains fluid, even in high resolution”, adds Davodet.

The technical and creative teams have also taken advantage of Smode's capabilities in controlled study environments. The pre-production It took place in the Novelty, where immersive workflows were built based on their technology and results were previewed with spatial audio and full projection simulations.

The Novelty project manager, Julien Pagnier, led the event's immersive audio design department (technical direction, sonora, pre-production support and object-based mixing for bands), and met with each artistic team before and during their performances to add 3D sound positioning in the space and enrich each session with additional layers of immersive audio, also based on the visual content presented in the show.

“The real challenge was to offer a fast and efficient immersive mix, without ceasing to preserve the codes of a traditional concert. The immersive concept really took the live experience to another dimension, says Pagnier.. Odyssey's scale and complexity required absolute stability and performance under pressure. “Smode provided the reliability needed for daily immersive shows.”.

Its real-time architecture also allowed for last-minute creative changes or operational corrections during the performance live, without compromising visual fidelity. With this level of control, each audience had a truly unique experience: an unrepeatable interaction between music, visuals and space.

In addition to supplying Smode's video infrastructure and servers, Alabama Media played a broader role in the production, supervising logistics, technical coordination, editing and managing all video content.

How unique industry technical services provider with a dedicated immersive sound department, Novelty also played a key role in the project's audio system, with Alabama providing additional sound services.

The video and audio systems were deployed by Dushow (Novelty Group company) in Paris, with immersive settings of front-of-house and a powerful system L-Acoustics adapted for object-based spatial audio mixing.

The integration of Smode's visuals with Odyssey's sound design, managed with the Spat Revolution system MiRA FLUX::, created a perfectly coordinated audiovisual environment that allowed the audience to feel immersed both visually and soundly.