ICO
The Four Seasons – composed and conducted by Henning Kraggerud
Mixed Reality Concert Experience
© Photo credits: Christian Sivertsen
Use-case overview
The Four Seasons
The Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) production is one of four flagship cultural productions within the XTREME Horizon Europe project. Developed in collaboration with the ICO and based in Limerick, Ireland, this production focuses on capturing and reimagining orchestral performance through cutting-edge mixed reality and spatial sound technology.
The production centres on a performance of The Four Seasons, composed by Norwegian violinist and conductor Henning Kraggerud, performed together with ICO musicians. The aim is to accurately capture dynamic performances in space and time, enabling immersive and interactive MR applications that showcase the full potential of XTREME technologies.
Key information
Featured work:
The Four Seasons – composed and conducted by Henning Kraggerud
Partner institution:
University of Limerick XTREME Living Lab with the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO), Limerick, Ireland
Production type:
Immersive orchestral concert experience in Mixed Reality
Date:
March 2026
Technology:
Apple Vision Pro (XR)
Status:
User testing: XTRME Living Lab
About the Mixed Reality experience
The centrepiece of the ICO production is a performance of The Four Seasons, composed by Henning Kraggerud — a celebrated Norwegian violinist, conductor, and composer.
Kraggerud performed the work alongside ICO musicians during the data capture session in Limerick in June 2025, bringing exceptional artistry to the session. The session was designed to advance XTREME’s goal of accurately capturing dynamic performances in space and time, enabling immersive and interactive MR applications. An audience study was also conducted during the session, providing valuable insights into audience perception and engagement during XR performances.
Photo credits: Christian Sivertsen
Living Lab Production & Institutional Enablement
The Irish Chamber Orchestra capture for The Four Seasons was made possible through the University of Limerick’s XTREME Living Lab, led by Associate Professor Mairtin Cunneen, in close partnership with the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s management team.
The Living Lab provided the institutional foundation for the project: procuring the orchestra, hosting the consortium, and securing the production investment, partnerships, planning, and research environment needed to bring the capture to life. As a human-centric AI and immersive innovation environment, the Living Lab connects technical innovation with arts practice and public-facing research — and its role here was foundational, creating the conditions through which the orchestra’s performance could be transformed into a mixed reality experience.
On the ground, Gerry Keenan and Cathriona Murphy served as the Irish Chamber Orchestra’s production partners, managing orchestral coordination, scheduling, and communication to align the performance with the technical and creative needs of the capture. Their work was essential to translating the artistic performance into a coordinated, capture-ready production.
Together, this partnership between the University of Limerick / XTREME Living Lab and the Irish Chamber Orchestra reflects XTREME’s broader ambition: connecting music and mixed reality to wider questions of accessibility, community, therapy, and responsible immersive technology.
The Four Seasons in Mixed Reality
Proces
From first alignment to final experience — a structured, iterative creative journey.
Framing the Project & Aligning the Vision
The project started with an initial phase of aligning expectations and framing the production. As part of that process, the full XTREME consortium gathered in Limerick — hosted by the Irish Chamber Orchestra and the University of Limerick — for three days of project updates, technical workshops, and collaborative planning. It was the first opportunity for the wider team to engage directly with the ICO as a creative partner, to explore the possibilities of mixed reality in an orchestral concert context, and to begin shaping the vision for what would become the Four Seasons MR experience.
Read more: XTREME Project Consortium Meeting: Limerick, July 2–4, 2024
Data Capture – November 2024
The first major data capture for the IWAMD production took place over two days at the University of Nottingham’s Virtual and Immersive Production Studio in November 2024. The sessions focused on capturing performances by ICO musicians using a sophisticated combination of spatial sound and visual recording technologies.
Visual Capture Techniques
- Volumetric Capture – DepthKit with 8 RGBD sensors for 3D representations
- Spatial Video Recording – wide-field visual perspectives for immersive environments
- Body Motion Capture – tracking intricate movements to animate performers
- Facial Performance Capture – recording subtle facial expressions for realism
- Gaussian Capture – advanced spatial rendering for enhanced visuals
Spatial Sound Recording
- 4 cardioid microphones around the performers
- 8 omnidirectional microphones
- 2 ambisonic microphones
- Binaural dummy head recording
These recording techniques, combined with room acoustic measurements, will enable ambience sound capture, room acoustic estimation, sound visualisation, and sound localisation — all to be reproduced within the 4DSOUND system for immersive experiences.
Read more: XTREME Milestone: Data-capturing event at the University of Nottingham
Big Data Capture at University of Limerick, Ireland – June 2025
In June 2025, the XTREME team carried out an important data capture session in Limerick, Ireland, with the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO) and world-class Norwegian violinist and conductor Henning Kraggerud. This milestone event brought together representatives from several XTREME partners to advance our shared goal: accurately capturing dynamic performances in space and time, enabling immersive and interactive MR applications that showcase the full potential of XTREME technologies.
Audio and visual recordings using multiple advanced techniques were conducted by the ITU, IIT, UoN teams, ensuring high-precision capture of the spatial sound and acoustics, and video of the event. XTREME team members engaged in the capture were: Harshit, Leo Vitasovic, Christian Sivertsen, Ariel Gjaci, Richard Ramchurn. Dolby Atmos recording was performed by Daniel Davidsen from 3C Sound.
As part of the session, Agnes Kloft from Aalto University conducted a live audience study with nine audience members, providing valuable insights into audience perception and engagement during performances in XR — a critical aspect of XTREME’s research.
Read more: Big XTREME Milestone Achieved: Data Capture in Limerick
First research prototype tested in different venues – March – June 2026
With the first prototype complete, the ICO experience moved into a broader testing phase — exploring how the work translates across different settings and audience configurations. A notable milestone came at SXSW 2026 in Austin, Texas, where the University of Nottingham’s VIP Studio team adapted the experience to run inside an Igloo immersive space. This demonstrated something important: the production does not have to be experienced on an individual headset. Presented collectively in a shared immersive environment, the Four Seasons MR experience opens up new possibilities for how audiences can encounter it together. Audience research and user testing continued in parallel at the XTREME Living Lab at the University of Limerick.
Read more: XTREME Experience Demonstrated in Igloo Immersive Space at SXSW, 2026, Austin, Texas
Final testing and refinements – 2026
The experience is currently in its final phase of refinement, incorporating feedback from user testing and the insights gathered across different venues and presentation formats. The goal is a polished, research-informed production that demonstrates the full potential of XTREME’s mixed reality technology in a concert context. Further updates will be added here as the production reaches its final form.
XTREME Research areas
3D Reconstruction of dynamically moving people, real-time motion capture of a person in a mobile environment, fine grain human pose estimation (Leibniz University Hannover)
3D audio–visual reconstruction of the scene: mapping multichannel sound to an acoustic image stream, multimodal (Italian Institute of Technology)
3D Reconstruction of dynamic scenes/people (IT University of Copenhagen, Aalto University)
Scene understanding and 3D semantic visual reconstruction of the scene (University of Twente)
Sound reconstruction and visualization, music content understanding, human computer interaction and experience design (IT University of Copenhagen)
Human computer-interaction for social experience (University of Nottingham, IT University of Copenhagen)
Artistic research (University of Nottingham, IT University of Copenhagen, XTREME Living Lab, University of Limerick)
Research on the potential social opportunities of mixed reality for music therapy and social facing applications such as community music (XTREME Living Lab at University of Limerick)
Mixing stereoscopic capture and passthrough/VR scenes for low-cost 3D characters in mixed reality (University of Nottingham)
Credits
The Four Seasons Antonio Vivaldi
Original Production
Henning Kraggerud: Soloist & Creative Direction
Irish Chamber Orchestra
Hosting institutions: University of Limerick / Irish Chamber Orchestra Team
Martin Cunneen (University of Limerick)
Gerry Keenan, Cathriona Murphy (Irish Chamber Orchestra)
Mixed Reality Experience
Ane Skak: Creative Direction (Immersive Stories)
Paul Tennent: Technical Production (University of Nottingham)
Paul Tennent: Content Design & Scene programming (University of Nottingham)
Emma Pi Larsen: CG Artist (KHORA)
Maria Høeberg Holmberg: Technical Coordination (KHORA)
Simon Max Bloch Lajboschitz: KHORA’s production lead
Glenn McGarry: Audio Remix for VR (University of Nottingham)
Richard Ranchurn: Stereoscopic video editing (University of Nottingham)
Yannis Parcharidis, Sakis Rogas, Kostas Iliadis: System Architecture, XR Integration & Gameplay Interaction (BOLT Virtual)
Leo Vitasovic: AI Visualisations (IT University of Copenhagen)
Caroline Gaudeoso: Sound visualisations (IT University of Copenhagen)
Data Capture
Ane Skak: Creative direction of the capture (Immersive Stories)
Paul Tennent: Video Producer (University of Nottingham)
Leo Vitasovic: Ambisonic microphone capture (IT University of Copenhagen)
Harshit: GoPro video capture (IT University of Copenhagen)
Christian Sivertsen: script supervision & documentation (IT University of Copenhagen)
Ariel Gjaci: Eigenmike sound capture (IIT)
Richard Ramchurn: Video Capture + Video Editor (University of Nottingham)
Daniel Davidsen: Dolby Atmos Recording (3C Sound)
Peter Gilbert: Driver, Runner, Music Stand Upholsterer (University of Nottingham)
Sami S. Brandt: Supervision and coordination of data capture processes (IT University of Copenhagen)
XTREME Project
Paul Tennent: Integration Work Package Leader (University of Nottingham)
Justyna Starostka: Project & Communication Manager (IT University of Copenhagen)
Sami S. Brandt: Project Coordinator (IT University of Copenhagen)
