Invisible Garden

A geolocation audio experience by Tim Phillips and Rosa Carbo-Mascarell. Commissioned by Now Play This for the Somerset House during the London Games Festival 2017.

Imagine there is a world on top of London that we cannot see, we can only hear. Invisible Garden takes the courtyard of Sommerset House and transforms it into a bucolic natural soundscape.

The project came to be when Tim and I were exploring using GPS in Unity. We built an early prototype in a day, placing imaginary sheep and birds around London, and took the game on a walk around my neighbourhood. A few months later we were asked by the curators at Now Play This to expand the concept for the Sommerset House.

Visitors wore a helmet I designed and built. Inside it was a phone that tracked the gyroscope and GPS to determine the user’s position in the courtyard. We used binaural sound to immerse players in an audio garden we designed.