For the launch of Beatie Wolfe's album, Raw Space, Design I/O developed a cutting-edge, modern take on the album concept by developing a seven-day live streaming VR experience for the record as it played from the Nokia Bell Labs anechoic chamber, one of the most sonically isolated spaces in the world. Raw Space reawakens the narrative and ritual of the album experience by bringing the music and lyrical stories to life through generative visuals, long-form 360° live streaming, and virtual reality.
The VR experience was driven by Design I/O’s custom software, which augmented a 360° video stream of the vinyl playing with generative 3D visuals that reacted to the music and lyrics of each track. As a preface to the streaming event, Design I/O customized the concept to work as a live performance at Bell Labs, inviting the viewers to look into the anechoic chamber through a virtual window projection and watch each song’s graphical world react to Beatie playing live.
The collaboration between Design I/O and Beatie Wolfe celebrated 50 years of Experiments in Art and Technology at Nokia Bell Labs.
CREDITS
Created by Design I/O in collaboration with Beatie Wolfe and Nokia Bell Labs.
Design and VR Drawings: James Paterson / Presstube
Design, Animation and Illustration: Joshua Goodrich
DepthKit filming: Ivaylo Getov
Addition Software Development: Dan Moore
Made with openFrameworks and DepthKit. Special thanks to David Lublin, Diederick Huijbers and Elliot Woods for help and advice.
Video footage courtesy of Lonely Leap
LIVE AUGMENTED PERFORMANCE
In addition Design I/O created an augmented performance at Bell Labs, that allowed the viewers to look into the anechoic chamber through a virtual window and watch each song’s graphical elements augment and react to Beatie Wolf playing live in the chamber.
