Art

Austin 360 reviews Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno's SXSW talk

Austin 360 reviews Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno's SXSW talk
Environmental crisis dire, but not hopeless, say Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe at SXSW

SXSW announces "From Green to Red" projected city block sized

SXSW announces "From Green to Red" projected city block sized

SXSW 2022 Art Program announces "From Green To Red" as 1 of 6 of the festival's art installations

Art: Postcards for Democracy - A collective postart campaign born out of lockdown 

Art: Postcards for Democracy - A collective postart campaign born out of lockdown 

Artistic visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh & Beatie Wolfe joined forces for this lockdown art project in support of the postal service and our right to vote. The pair received tens of thousands of postcards.

Art: From Green to Red - An interactive environmental protest data art piece

Art: 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 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?

Art: Raw Space: The Raw Space Chamber

Art: Raw Space: The Raw Space Chamber

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: The Updated Album Deck Of Cards (Raw Space) - Collaborating With The World’s Leading Designers

Art: The Updated Album Deck Of Cards (Raw Space) - 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.

Art: Raw Space: The Raw Space Beam

Art: Raw Space: The Raw Space Beam

Following its launch from the quietest room in the world, Raw Space was beamed into space via the historic 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.

WIRED talks to Wolfe about her new album Raw Space

WIRED talks to Wolfe about her new album Raw Space

Wired talks to Beatie Wolfe about her World First Live 360 AR Stream for the release of her album, Raw Space

Art: The Raw Space Anti-Stream - the world’s first 360° AR Live-Stream

Art: The Raw Space Anti-Stream - the world’s first 360° AR Live-Stream

Raw Space was released as the world’s first 360° AR Live-Stream, produced in collaboration with 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.

Art: The Montagu Square Album Jacket - Fashioning Music Into Art: A Truly Tailored Album Release

Art: The Montagu Square Album Jacket - 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.

Art: The Album Deck Of Cards (Montagu Square) - The World’s first intelligent album deck

In addition to her Musical Jacket, Wolfe released her second album Montagu Square as the world's first NFC Album Deck, which marked a new intersection between technology and music. The album deck comes as a pack of beautifully printed MOO 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.

Art: World's First 3d Interactive Vinyl (8ight) - 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