The One Blue Voice Immersive Experience, presented by 11th Hour Racing, was an immersive cinema experience for visitors to ports along the route of sailing's most challenging round-the-world race, The Ocean Race. We built a story-led interactive space that invited visitors to connect to the ocean from the joyful perspective of sailors, but one that also saw firsthand how they are threatened by the devastating impact of human activity.

Exhibited in Alicante (ES), Newport (US), Genoa (IT) and New York (US), guests at each Race Village were transported aboard a sailing yacht racing offshore and taken below the surface to learn how our ability to thrive is inseparable from the health of the ocean. They were introduced to the world of marine animals, seagrass and the tiny phytoplankton that are the foundation of the marine food chain, supporting all life in our ocean. The experience was designed to inspire a deep emotional, empathetic connection with the ocean and understand the urgency required to save it.

Guests began at The Water Table in One Blue Voice’s ‘airlock’. Greeted with rippling light forms over a water basin containing ocean water, a woman’s voice comes through water, inviting visitors to dip their hands in the interactive ocean table. Using projectors and robotic lights projected into the water, we created caustics and added graphics onto the walls and ceiling. The soundscape uses generative algorithmic sounds, and rumble pads placed under the water table gave analogue feedback.

Moving through to the main pavilion space, guests are transported from a sailor’s perspective above the waves, to an underwater world that visually and sonically envelops them. Using the LILLI, an immersive, volumetric, reflective lightfield display designed and created by Tyler Schoeppner, we created a full 360 degree viewable animation (a “hologram”) at the heart of the experience. We projection-mapped onto the hexagonal walls of the massive tent and floor to extend the undersea world outwards.

Tellart’s in-house team worked with 11th Hour Racing using microscopy, underwater and ocean yacht racing films to hand paint and animate 3D worlds that bring the ocean to life for guests. Animated characters as tiny as microalgae and as large as whales move through and around the room with an immersive sound and musical score.

The space then transformed into interactive giant seagrass meadows. Tracking cameras allow guests to influence the movement of the seagrass through their movement, playfully creating relationships with the underwater world around them.

The Pavilions welcomed 138,600 visitors. Guests were encouraged to participate in the action room, where over 32,000 people were inspired to sign a petition that was presented to the UN General Assembly in support of a Universal Declaration of Ocean Rights.

The accessible, bilingual experience was recreated at each port using locally available resources as much as possible.