V&A Museum Solo Exhibition - 2018
Beatie Wolfe’s V&A solo exhibition “The Art of Music in the Digital Age” was a first by a singer songwriter since Bowie
Collaboration with the V&A
This year, the V&A Museum invited musician and technology innovator Beatie Wolfe to exhibit her series of album innovations.
The display explores what design for music can mean in the digital age – from a musical jacket woven with Wolfe's music to the world’s first "anti-stream" from the quietest room on Earth
A special opportunity for friends of The Dots & Beatie Wolfe...
If you would like a guided tour of this exhibition from Beatie herself, please send along your Dots profile URL and name to contact@beatiewolfe.com, and state 'The Dots community guided tour' in the email subject.
Spaces are limited and the tour will meet at 3.45 Tuesday 18th of September.
Exhibition Overview
“Musical Weirdo and Visionary” (VICE) Beatie Wolfe presents a series of album innovations that explore how technology can be used to recapture a sense of storytelling, ceremony and tangibility for music in the digital age. Bridging the physical and digital and reimagining the vinyl experience in retro-future ways, these designs range from a theatre in the palm of your hand, an album as a deck of cards and wearable record “jacket”, an ‘anti-stream’ from the world’s quietest room and a Space beam from the Big Bang Horn.
Wolfe’s latest design is the Raw Space Chamber, which will allow visitors to enter an anechoic chamber and immerse themselves in a ceremonial listening experience, while live AR animations bring the album’s artwork and lyrics to life in real- time. Come hear the sound of silence, a blast from the past, and the music launched into deepest space.
“I love the stories of albums, the tangibility of records and the ceremony of listening. From the time I started writing songs (age eight) and discovered my parents’ vinyl collection, I saw records as musical books, with the artwork providing the perfect backdrop for the music, and I loved opening them up and entering into the world of the album. There was also a ritual to the occasion. I started imagining what my album could look like, what it could feel like, what worlds I could create. When it was time for my first album to be released, it was a very different era with the digital replacing the physical. So I thought about how to connect the two. I saw technology as a way of reimagining the vinyl experience, while also making it magical for today’s generation.” – Beatie Wolfe
Part of London Design Festival at the V&A
Gallery Lighting in collaboration with Plumen
Debut album: 8IGHT, 2012 – The Vinyl for the Digital Generation
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.
Second Album: Montagu Square, 2015 – The Musical Jacket
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.
Second Album: Montagu Square, 2015 – The Intelligent Album Deck
The Montagu Square Intelligent Album Deck 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.
Photos by Stu Nicholls
Third Album: Raw Space, 2017 - The “Anti-Stream”
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, just like I did opening up a record as a kid.”
Wolfe follows in the footsteps of Andy Warhol, John Cage and Robert Rauschenberg as a collaborator of Nokia Bell Labs’ E.A.T. programme.
Third Album: Raw Space, 2018 – 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 portable incarnation. Inside this gilded chamber, installed by Getov and Steely and wrapped in NASA-grade Mylar linking to Wolfe’s Raw Space Beam and Project Echo, visitors can immerse themselves in a truly magical and ceremonial listening experience, while AR animations bring the album’s artwork and lyrics to life in real-time via a vintage coin-operated binoculars viewport and spinning vinyl.
Produced in collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs.
Third Album: Raw Space, 2017/18 – The Raw Space Beam
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 Beam 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
Documentry video made in collaboration with The Mill with footage by Lonely Leap
Exhibition Design Team
Ivaylo Getov, Amelia Steely, and Caro Rossdale (by date joined)
Companies
MOO
- Design
Beatie Wolfe Productions
- Music
Nokia
- Technology
The Mill
- Media Production
Plumen
- Retail
