Highlight Projects & Innovations

 
 

imPRINTING: The Artist’s Brain

A Sonic Self-Portrait

imPRINTING transports visitors inside the artist’s brain via a retro-future “thinking cap” allowing them to tune into and discover its many channels and sonic imprints including conversations, collaborations, music, memory, hopes, fears and dreams. In this sonic self-portrait, “musical weirdo and visionary” Beatie Wolfe presents a new format for the digital age: a data-encoded “thinking cap” tailored by Mr Fish as a counterpart to their award-winning, wearable Album Jacket. Via retro listening stations, plugged into the hat, the audience will be able to listen to and explore the brain’s many channels which include music (limbic system), memory (temporal neocortex), collaborations (medial prefrontal cortex), conversations (Wernicke’s area) with the data related to each “brain channel” ecologically encoded in glass and woven into the cap to be preserved for up to 10,000 years - more (+)

 
 

The World’s First Bioplastic record

R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe

The world’s first commercially available bioplastic 12” with Michael Stipe and Beatie Wolfe was released in support of EarthPercent and sold out within 5 minutes. This bioplastic vinyl, an environmental design solution by Evolution Music, 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 - more (+)

Svalbard’s 10,000 yrs Music Vault

Safeguarding the world’s most valuable music

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 using green and durable storage technology. Beatie’s music will be included alongside the Polar Music Prize, The National Library of New Zealand, International Library of African Music and the International Music Council - more (+)

 

From Green to Red

An interactive environmental protest data art piece

Beatie Wolfe creates a stirring environmental art piece about human impact on the planet, built using 800,000 years of NASA’s climate 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. “This piece is about re-presenting data in a way that people can see differently and absorb, using the power of art to make it evocative and relatable,” Wolfe says, “so that people can get a sense of where we are right now” - more (+)

The Raw Space Broadcast

The Rawest Sound enters the Rawest Space

Following its launch from the quietest room in the world, Raw Space was beamed into space via the historic 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 Nokia 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 - more (+)

 

Postcards for Democracy

A collective post art campaign born out of lockdown 

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, at a time that could jeopardize the democracy of the country, Mothersbaugh and Wolfe joined forces for this collective postcard art demonstration. The pair received tens of thousands of postcards from all over the world which were then exhibited at the Rauschenberg Gallery in a 3-month exhibition this summer - more (+)

Raw Space - the World’s first 360° AR Livestream

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

Raw Space was released as the world’s first live 360 AR experience and ‘anti-stream’. 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 Nokia Bell Labs’ E.A.T. programme - more (+)

 

Raw Space Chamber

The immersive museum experience

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)

Art and Nature

SoCal Eco-Documentaries

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. Check out the documentary's first two chapters with accompanying video extracts - more (+)

 
 

Orange Juice for the Ears

A Barbican Centre Commissioned Documentary

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. - more (+)

 
 

  • Collaborating With The World’s Leading Designers

    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 - which includes Erik Spiekermann, Marian Bantjes, Astrid Stavro, Lucienne Roberts et al - 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.

  • Fashioning Music Into Art: A Truly Tailored Album Release

    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.

  • A Vinyl For Your Phone, A Theatre For The Palm Of Your Hand

    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