World’s First Bioplastic Record - with Michael Stipe

R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe release the World’s First Bioplastic record

2022

The Story

Own a piece of music history? The world’s first commercially available bioplastic 12” will feature “Future If Future” by Michael Stipe and “Oh My Heart” by Beatie Wolfe in support of EarthPercent.

This will be the first bioplastic vinyl, an environmental design solution by Evolution Music, that is a genuinely revolutionary moment for both the music industry and record collectors, offering a non-fossil fuel future for vinyl recordings that globally is c180 million LPs (or 30,000 tonnes of PVC) a year. The solution uses circular economy principles to replace the harmful production and use of single use plastics and minimise waste in the music industry. Making it easy to make the change by producing bioplastic LPs (instead of PVC) using the record pressing plants’ existing machinery and production processes.

Project’s Reception

After coverage in the global and local press this limited edition 12” sold out within 5 minutes of it going on sale.

Press highlights included Billboard, Pitchfork, CBS News, Cool Hunting, Rolling Stone, Boing Boing, NME Magazine and more

Svalbard’s 10,000 yrs Music Vault

Safeguarding the world’s most valuable music, preserved in ice

2022

The Story

The Global Music Vault (a seed bank equivalent for music) has invited Beatie Wolfe to be part of its Proof of Concept for safeguarding the world's most valuable music. Beatie’s music, along with the Polar Music Prize, The National Library of New Zealand, International Library of African Music, has been encoded in glass (using pioneering eco and durable technology by Microsoft Research) and stored in a vault in Svalbard to be preserved for 10,000 years.

Projects Reception

Feature length interviews include design magazine Cool Hunting, music publication Billboard, the world's leading tech show on BBC World Service, business press Fast Company and as a real honor the New Scientist made it a cover story in its latest magazine

From Green to Red

An interactive environmental protest data art piece

2020

The Story

Beatie Wolfe creates a stirring environmental art piece about human impact on the planet, built using 800,000 years of historic NASA data. “From Green to Red” (taken from the title of a song Wolfe wrote in 2006 after seeing ‘An Inconvenient Truth') tracks the impact of human behaviour on the planet, creating a stirring visualization of the CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere, and asks us the question is it too late to turn back? Wolfe’s latest innovation reimagines the music video format (and protest song), taking the audience on a journey through the planet’s timeline - more (+)

The Back Story

Beatie was giving a talk about her innovations at JPL and afterward, one of NASA's chief engineers shared this graph with Beatie. Upon seeing the graph, and experiencing a similar jolt as she did first watching An Inconvenient Truth, Beatie wanted to take the data and transform it into something everyone could absorb

Postcards for Democracy - with Mark Mothersbaugh

A collective post art campaign born out of lockdown

The Story

Artistic visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh & Beatie Wolfe share a love of tangible art forms, in and amongst their futuristic explorations. In the summer of 2020, in light of the threat to our 225yr old postal service, Mothersbaugh and Wolfe joined forces for this collective non-partisan postcard art demonstration. The campaign captured the public's imagination with the pair receiving tens of thousands of cards from all over the world which were then exhibited at the Rauschenberg Gallery in a 3-month exhibition in addition to a selection going into the Smithsonian's permanent collection. To this day the pair are still receiving cards!

Project’s Reception

Kind support for this project from Billboard, Pitchfork, Fast Company, The Los Angeles Times, Cool Hunting, Design Milk, The Art Newspaper, The Nation, Brooklyn Vegan, CBS, Austin Chronicle, USA Today, SXSW, Dezeen, Variety and more

World’s First 360° AR Live-stream

A “Fantasia” experience for the album in the streaming age

2017

The Story

Raw Space was released as the world’s first live 360° AR experience, produced in collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs and Design I/O. Combining live 360° stereoscopic video of Wolfe’s physical record stream from the quietest room on earth, with real-time AR animations, the effect was a Fantasia-like live streamed album, which ran continuously for a week with artwork that evolved every time the record spun. “With ‘Raw Space’, I wanted to create the anti-stream for our current streaming generation and really celebrate the world of the album – its artwork, arc, narrative, music – in a ceremonial and absorbing way that makes the listener feel like they’ve been transported into the world of the album, like I did opening up a record as a kid.” Wolfe follows in the footsteps of Andy Warhol, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg as a collaborator of Bell Labs’ E.A.T. programme

Raw Space Reception

The Raw Space experience has been described as "like walking around in a dream someone had made for me" by The New Scientist, "an extraordinary production: music and visuals" by BBC Radio 4 and "utterly groundbreaking" by Fast Company. Highlight features also include Tech Crunch, Vice, Forbes, Creative Review, BBC Click, Wired, MusicTech Magazine, Highsnobiety.

Beatie Wolfe has shared Raw Space at Remix, SXSW18, LDF18, DLD, Collision, LA Times.

Raw Space Broadcast

The rawest sound enters the rawest space

2018

The Story

Following its launch from the quietest room in the world, Raw Space was beamed into space via the historic Nokia Bell Labs Holmdel Horn Antenna, which was used to prove the validity of the Big Bang theory. Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr Robert Wilson (who discovered Cosmic Background Radiation) made the first update to this Historic National Landmark in 50 years to make sure the music of Raw Space got past the earth's atmosphere and into outer space. The Raw Space Broadcast was not the studio version of the album, but the raw anechoic version (no reverb, EQ or audio enhancements) recorded in the Bell Labs Anti-echo Chamber – Wolfe’s idea being that for the first time, raw anechoic sound would enter raw space as a true reflection of our humanity at a time of increased airbrushing, auto-tuning and AI

The Documentary

A short film about Wolfe's "Raw Space Beam" was made by the award-winning production house The Mill. The documentary has its private preview at NASA's JPL with its first public screening at the LA Times NewStory festival, guest-curated by Beatie Wolfe. The film’s first screening in Europe was for Beatie Wolfe’s V&A exhibition, where it was viewed by 100,000 attendees

Orange Juice for the Ears

A Barbican Centre commissioned documentary about Beatie Wolfe

The Story

London’s Barbican Centre commissioned a documentary about Beatie’s work as a highlight of its 2019 ‘Life Rewired’ season, which was directed by Ross Harris. With the season investigating the impact of the pace and extent of technological change in our culture and society and looking at how we can grasp and respond to the seismic shifts these advances will bring about, there are few artists who exemplify this exploration quite as much

World Premiere

The Barbican hosted the world premiere of the documentary they commissioned about Beatie Wolfe’s music, innovations & approach titled ‘Orange Juice for the Ears: From Space Beam to Anti-Streams’. Following the first screening of the documentary, Wolfe performed live and took part in a Q&A with Evening Standard’s Editor-in-Chief. Read the nights programme (+)

Industry Screening

Variety’s James Patrick Herman hosted the industry premiere of ‘Orange Juice for the Ears: From Space Beam to Anti-Streams’ at SecondHome Los Angeles. The screening was followed by a live performance and James interviewing Beatie Wolfe and the director Ross Harris - which was recorded direct to vinyl by Phonocut

Streaming Premiere

The Virtual Design Festival dedicated a day to the work of Beatie Wolfe and held the exclusive online premiere of the documentary (where it was the most-watched video of the festival). The film premiere was followed by a preview of Wolfe's forthcoming environmental protest piece, an essay by Wolfe on the power of art and concluded with a live interview with Dezeen founder Marcus Fairs

The Album Deck of Cards 2.0

Collaborating with the world’s leading designers

2018

The Story

The Raw Space Album Deck is an update of Wolfe’s intelligent album deck of cards format, originally conceived for Montagu Square as a type of digital cassette tape. Produced in collaboration with ArtCenter College of Design and its Acting Chair of Graphic Design Sean Adams, each of the Raw Space song cards have been designed by a leading international artist to reflect their interpretation of Wolfe’s music. Listeners can simply tap the song card to their phone to instantly play the track and access its content—liner notes, lyrics, artwork, music VR videos etc—which is being updated all the time, giving the Album Deck the feeling of a “living” or dynamic vinyl. Release sold out in 3 days

The Background

Beatie Wolfe has been working with Sean Adams (Chair of ArtCenter) and MOO to develop her Raw Space Album Deck (an update of her 'world's first' concept for her album Montagu Square) with some of the world's most influential designers, which include Erik Spiekermann, Marian Bantjes, Astrid Stavro, Lucienne Roberts (more about them below) who have each designed a song card for her Raw Space Deck

One of the key design visions Beatie had was to incorporate the gold mylar theme from her Raw Space Broadcast and Space Chamber into the deck of cards, which has never been done before so MOO accepted the challenge of inventing a way to incorporate gold foil onto its NFC cards

The Designers

Erik Spiekermann (DEU) the first designer to be elected into the European Design Awards Hall of Fame; Marian Bantjes (CND) an internationally known designer with several works in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York; Astrid Stavro (ESP) a multi award winning designer, then of Atlas now the newest partner at Pentagram; Yuma Naito (JP/US) ArtCenter graduate and now with DesignStudio; Sean Adams (US) Acting Chair of the Graphic Design Program at ArtCenter and multi award-winning designer named one of the forty most important people shaping design internationally; Rafael Savvy (MX) Founder and Creative Director of Savvy Studios, and Lucienne Roberts (UK) graphic designer and co-curator of Design Museum’s 2018 exhibition “Hope to Nope”

The Story

The Raw Space Chamber tells the story of Raw Space – the world’s first live 360° AR stream – in its new immersive, portable incarnation. Inside this anechoic chamber (wrapped in NASA-grade Mylar linking to Wolfe’s Raw Space Broadcast), visitors can immerse themselves in a magical and ceremonial listening experience, watching the record come to life via a vintage coin-operated viewport (converted into a VR/AR headset).

The Raw Space Chamber was first presented at the LA Times Festival of Books before being installed in the V&A for Beatie’s solo exhibition.

the Album jacket

Fashioning music into art: A truly tailored album release

2015

The Story

The Montagu Square Musical Jacket is a reimagining of the record jacket and a truly tailored album release for the 21st century. Wolfe recorded her second album Montagu Square in the former home of Hendrix, McCartney, Ringo, Lennon & Yoko Ono, and in the room where Hendrix wrote ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and McCartney penned ‘Eleanor Rigby’. This live recording was then translated (complete with its ambient sound, resonance of the room and audience applause) into a woven fabric by textiles artist BeatWoven and cut by tailor Mr Fish – who dressed Hendrix, Jagger and Bowie – into the first Musical Jacket of its kind. The Jacket has also been NFC-enabled, allowing people to hear the music of Montagu Square by tapping their phone onto the fabric. Wolfe saw the Montagu Square wearable album jacket as a truly tailored album release for the 21st Century.

Montagu Square Reception

Wolfe's Montagu Square Album Jacket has been exhibited in a 10-day solo exhibition at the V&A Museum for London Design Festival and as part of the exhibition: ‘You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966-1970’. It has also been showcased at SXSW, DLD, Apple HQ, Beats HQ, on Sky News, Fast Company, Tech Crunch and has been exhibited for Her Majesty the Queen. Additional highlight features include The Independent.

8ight: World's First 3D Interactive VINYL

A vinyl for your phone, a theatre for the palm of your hand

2013

The Story

For her debut album Wolfe wanted to put a record (the format she loved) onto a phone (a device now integral to people's listening) and so in collaboration with Design I/O pioneered the 3D Interactive Album App. This app opened up like a record with the liner notes, lyrics, artwork and music. But to give this experience a twist, the Palm Top Theatre was introduced to the release. By slotting your phone into the Palm Top Theatre, it was transformed into a miniature theatre in the palm of your hand and you could watch 8ight's 3D interactive visuals, filmed by Weavers Productions, come to life in a way that recaptured the magic of opening up a record and exploring its artwork

8ight Reception

Beatie Wolfe released her debut album 8ight as a 3D interactive album app. GQ Magazine premiered the release across its magazine and iPad edition. Impressed by this 3D innovation, Apple invited Beatie Wolfe to be the first artist to tour all of its global event theatres: New York, London, Berlin & Tokyo. Beatie's interviewers included: Spin's Editor-in-Chief Craig Marks in New York, GQ's Commissioning Editor Charlie Burton in London and De:Bug's Founder & Editor Sascha Kösch in Berlin

The Album Deck of Cards

A new intersection between technology and music

2014

The Story

In addition to her Musical Jacket, Wolfe released her second album as the world's first NFC Album Deck, marking a new intersection between technology and music. The album deck comes as a pack of beautifully printed cards, encased in a box reminiscent of a tape cassette, with each card corresponding to a track from the Montagu Square album and featuring the song’s artwork, lyrics and an embedded NFC chip. Listeners can simply tap the song cards to their phone to instantly play the track and access its content – liner notes, lyrics, artwork, music videos etc – which is being updated all the time, giving the album deck the feeling of a “living” or dynamic vinyl

Album Deck Reaction

 The Montagu Square Deck has been described as "a brilliant idea that transcends novelty" by The Next Web and "bleeding edge" by Wired. It received additional features in Recode, Forbes, Sky News, BBC Click, Tech Crunch and was premiered at London's Serpentine Gallery and at Wired's Next Generation conference where Wolfe gave a keynote.

A-Z of California Flora, Fauna & Funga Stamp-Sheet

Beatie x Money Mark collaboration in support of abalone conservation

2023

The Story

Cool Hunting announced Beatie Wolfe & Money Mark's “A-Z of California’s Flora, Fauna and Funga” stamp-sheet & poster composed of 26 illustrations representing key species of the Golden State; from abalone, black bear and chanterelle to the Xantus's hummingbird, yucca and Zauschneria wildflower.

This limited edition signed stamp-sheet is in support of Abalone Conservation in Cayucos, California

Check out the wonderful article in Cool Hunting which announced the stamp-sheet and tells its backstory // read (+)

Climate Documentary

In and amongst Beatie speaking and unveiling her 'From Green to Red' art piece (an environmental protest piece built using 800,000 years of our planet’s data) at the Nobel Prize Summit, London Design Biennale, UN Climate Summit etc - Beatie has been filming a series of stories on So-Cal people and businesses who are rethinking their approach to ensure the sustainability of the this state's environment. The thread which connects each of these is Beatie and the guitar because of it being a great storytelling vehicle. Below I've detailed the documentary first two chapters with accompanying video extracts...

Kelp Forest  

"Rewilding California coastline"

Telling the story of how the once-thriving kelp forests and abundant abalone population of the California coastline have almost disappeared from our shores due to climate change and overfishing. This piece follows a local NOAA initiative (from farm to the ocean) to rewild the US west coast through conservation aquaculture, framed by the vital Chumash perspective. This short follows a similar vein to Urban Wood but shifts from “rethinking the urban landscape” to “rewilding California coastlines” aka from the land forests to our sea forests as both are key carbon capture systems. In addition to being a highly prized food source, abalone was also prized for its shell which became a key material for Native American art as well as used for guitar inlays. So this piece reminds us how art and nature are core to our humanity and how they're interlinked. Nature inspires art and art reflects our nature. So finding balance with the natural world is not just about our ability to survive but to thrive.

Urban Wood

"A circular economy that acts as a carbon bank and enhances urban life"

California is leading the way in reforesting our urban landscape for the long term by planting and growing the right trees in our cities and giving value to their end-of-life cycle. Visionary artist Beatie Wolfe has been working with CalFire, California Urban Forests Council, West Coast Arborists, and Taylor Guitars to tell the story of a groundbreaking circular economy initiative that is giving new value to urban trees by turning waste into an asset and turning tinder into guitars and homes. This initiative not only encourages and justifies further planting (especially in neglected urban areas where the quality of life is improved significantly) but also ensures that the carbon the trees absorb is not released back into the atmosphere. So think of this as a kind of carbon bank.

A Live dublab radio series of Beatie Wolfe

A live radio show exploring the power of music across space, science, art, health, film and technology “musical weirdo and visionary” (Vice) Beatie Wolfe talks to leading luminaries from Nobel Laureates to punk publishers, and hears the music that has most impacted them: their "Orange Juice for the Ears". The show airs globally from LA’s legendary station dublab radio (a non-profit, radio station dedicated to the growth of music, art and culture since 1999)

Subscribe to the podcast

Spotify // Apple Podcasts // Deezer // PocketCast // Google Podcasts // iHeart Radio // dublab radio

The Story

Beatie Wolfe was chosen to be 1 of 9 innovators to represent the UN Women “Impossible to Ignore” campaign that kicked off on International Women’s Day. With Beatie & co’s portraits appearing all across the world from Times Square to London Underground

The Story

Beatie Wolfe was invited to join Stephen Fry as one of the first sleep story narrators on Calm. Not one to do covers, Beatie Wolfe wrote, produced and narrated her first original story “The Ocean’s Lullaby” which was the first original content on the app. This was followed by “The Mysterious Sound of the Sea” which she wrote and recorded on Jacques Cousteau’s Baja boat out in the San Diego Bay. These stories were so popular she then released each story’s soundtrack

Nokia Bell Labs - Experiments in Arts & Technology

Reboots E.A.T. programme 50yrs after Cage, Warhol and Rauschenberg

The Story

Beatie Wolfe's Raw Space sits under the umbrella of Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology, a 50-year-old collaborative program which began in October, 1966 with 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, and Wolfe is the first 21st century collaborators joining the likes of past participants John Cage, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg. Bell Labs president and Nokia CTO Marcus Weldon said the program has “attenuated” over the decades, but he's delighted to kickstart it with Beatie Wolfe

Power of Music & Dementia

The question no one was asking... is it Music or Memory

The Story

The Power of Music & Dementia research tour ran for 4-months with the aim to objectively prove the power of music, in this case music unconnected to memory, for people living with dementia. Beatie performed her original music at a series of Priory Group care homes across the UK. Residents were monitored during the live performance and in the weeks following, listening to the same songs on headsets. This study is the first of its kind to test the impact of new music for those living with dementia. Results included “72% responding to the music in meaningful ways and significant improvements in memory and communication across the 4-month period

The Reception

Beatie’s work has been called "profound" and “a first of its kind” by The Times, "a musical miracle" by The Independent, "ground-breaking" by BBC Radio 4, “inspired” by WIRED and "extraordinary" by Forbes. Beatie was invited to present at DLD Health, Social Innovation Summit , WIRED’ Summit, UCSD, Berklee Music College, SXSW, Apple/Spotify HQ, NASA and the American Alzheimer's Association