Axios' Ina Fried on Beatie Wolfe's Raw Space Album
Beatie Wolfe taps augmented reality for latest album Raw Space
British musician taps augmented reality for latest album
While many musicians bemoan what technology has done to the recording industry, Beatie Wolfe embraces the opportunity.
Wolfe has used near-field communications chips and mobile apps to distribute her music in the past. Wolfe is streaming her new album, "Raw Story," live in 360-degree video on YouTube. The live stream will run for a week, starting today, broadcasting from the world's quietest room — the anechoic chamber in Nokia Bell Labs.
Synchronized visuals will appear in augmented reality. Each time a person logs in, they will see different visual elements from the track they are listening to.
"A record player will be physically live streaming my album on repeat for a week from the anechoic chamber... and people will be able to login wherever they are in the world, hear the album played in that unique sonic environment and explore the chamber in live 360-degree video," Wolfe told Axios. "The idea is they can't skip, shuffle etc, but wherever the album is in that cycle, that's what they'll hear."
You can check out the YouTube trailer here and view the live 360-degree stream here starting at 8 a.m. PT.
TechCrunch article & video on Wolfe's Raw Space
TechCrunch's Anthony Ha interviews Beatie Wolfe about her cutting edge album release for Raw Space
Singer-songwriter Beatie Wolfe is using technology to try to recapture some of music’s old-school magic and physicality.
We met with Wolfe last year to talk about her NFC-powered jacket, where you could tap your phone against the jacket and bring up a website promoting one of her singles.
For the launch of her new album Raw Space, Wolfe teamed up with Nokia Bell Labs (that’s the historic research facility Bell Labs, now owned by Nokia) and Design IO. Starting tomorrow, May 5, Bell Labs will be streaming 360-degree footage from its anechoic chamber — a room with no echoes, where a vinyl version of Raw Space will be playing.
The video will also include augmented reality animation created by Design IO, aimed at illustrating the emotions and ideas of the songs. Because some of the animation is generated in real time, it should look different each time through.
“I’d been really thinking about this idea of: What would the anti-stream for today’s streaming world look like?” Wolfe said. “And how could you kind of recreate that tangible component, all of the artwork that we’re currently missing out of that streaming experience, with this really pure sound — and bring that to life for today’s generation?”
This is happening under the umbrella of Bell Labs’ Experiments in Arts and Technology, a 50-year-old collaborative program whose past participants include artists like John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg. Bell Labs president and Nokia CTO Marcus Weldon said the program has “attenuated” over the decades, but he’s hoping to kickstart it by working with Wolfe.
“We thought, well, fiftieth anniversary, it’s time to revisit this,” he said.
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