The Montreux Jazz Heritage Lab2 to relive the Montreux Jazz Festival

How can we bring to life a musical heritage now preserved in a digital format? How does this newly digitised heritage change our perception of the past? And what new cultural perspectives does it open? An interdisciplinary research project by the EPFL + ECAL Lab, Metamedia Center and the ALICE laboratory set out to address these questions. It all began when Audemars Piguet joined forces with Montreux Sounds and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) to digitise, restore and preserve the treasured archives of the Montreux Jazz Festival, which was founded by the late Claude Nobs exactly 50 years ago. The tremendous collection comprises thousands of hours of recordings by the finest musicians on the planet. It is the first audiovisual library to have earned the accolade of UNESCO Memory of the World. “The project was inspired by the work of Claude Nobs. He was a faithful friend and so we are delighted to take part in this initiative. We are proud to participate in the colossal technological efforts needed to transform this unique heritage into a first-class digitised resource for future generations,” says Olivier Audemars, Vice-Chairman of the Audemars Piguet Board of Directors.

Work to preserve this legacy began in 2008 and is almost complete. Over the years the archives of the Montreux Jazz Festival have taken many different formats. “All the master copies have now been digitised and work on the original tapes will be finished by the end of the summer. We can now make full use of this heritage for research purposes,” continues Alain Dufaux, Operations Director at Metamedia Center. In the past 8 years, more than 11,000 hours of video recordings (in HD since 1991) and 6,000 hours of high-quality audio recordings have been preserved in uncompressed digital formats utilizing the very latest technology. Since 2010, this unique collection has used as a database for a number of research projects at EPFL.

Living heritage
The study conducted by the EPFL+ECAL Lab, the research centre for design at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the ALICE architecture studio ALICE (at EPFL), proposes a new vision for this digitised heritage. The aim is not to reconstitute the past, but instead to create a specific experience for a digitised archive. “The original concert experience is the backdrop of Lake Geneva and the mountains, the ambiance of festival-goers in their thousands, the unfolding of events on-stage, and above all the flesh-and-blood presence of the musicians. We can’t recreate this. Instead we need to make the most of what digital has to offer to create an alternative experience, a complementary experience,” explains Project Manager Nicolas Henchoz. The first private booth was launched in 2012 and awarded the Design Preis Schweiz the following year.

A ramped-up version of the booth, dubbed Montreux Heritage Lab2, opens to the public in November in the brand new Montreux Jazz Café at EPFL. Montreux Heritage Lab2 unlocks the lion’s share of the archive footage, immersing up to 20 viewers at a time in an intense audiovisual experience.

EPFL was guided by three principles in developing the new booth. First, the content and its cultural value take front and center. Stunning, well-preserved archival footage dominates the space, appearing on a screen whose sophisticated geometry gives the viewer a sense of depth and proximity to the stage. Then comes the surround sound – so fundamental to the immersive effect – which was orchestrated by Audioborn and Illusonic (two startups founded by former members of the Audiovisual Communications Laboratory, LCAV) with help from Hervé Lissek's Acoustic Group (LTS2) and the Yverdon-les-Bains company Relec with its PSI Audio high-precision speakers. The viewer’s experience is thus shaped by live footage and music – the very essence of the archive. The sense of immersion is further enhanced by the lateral walls of the booth, where mirrors reflect the selected footage and display information and visuals through an LED underlay. The experience is rounded out by anecdotes on the history of the festival showing up on the screens. The booth is structured to direct its light toward the Montreux Jazz Café next door and, in the evening, towards the heart of the campus.

Purpose-designed controls afford an overview of the archive footage, placing more than 44,000 tracks at your fingertips.

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From the outset, the project saw the light of day thanks to the crucial support from Audemars Piguet, who has been involved since the beginning. Loterie Romande, Fondation Ernest Göhner and external technological partners have also provided invaluable support.