Björk Generative AI Soundscape
Björk’s Kórsafn
OVerview
An AI-powered generative soundscape in collaboration with Björk featuring choral arrangements that span the length of her career. The project came to life in two places, a lobby score inside Ace Hotel’s Sister City hotel and online.
ROLE
Associate Creative Director
CLIENTS
Björk, Microsoft, Ace Hotel
TEAM
Listen, Pixel Labs
Kórsafn
kór = choral safn = archives
Image by Listen.
Sister City Hotel, 225 Bowery, NYC. Image by Sister City.
““an architectural structure in downtown manhattan offered me the hand in an AI tango and i accepted the call, i am alert with curiosity waiting the results. i offered them my choir archives, written over 17 years that will float through the pinball of artificial intelligence by the grid of bird migrations, clouds, aeroplanes and that voluptuous thing called barometer! hudson valley happens to be one of the most bird-trafficked deltas on the planet, i know this of my own experience .... hope you will enjoy this!””
A camera on top of the hotel aimed at the sky in NYC uses computer vision AI to detect objects and changes such as weather, wildlife, aircraft and the sun to trigger Björk’s choral clusters. The AI system learns overtime from the changing of the seasons and weather constantly evolving the sound - keeping in harmony with the sky.
Sister City Lobby
Microsite
Working directly with the artist we also created a website for people all over the world to experience the composition in real time. Our challenge was to create a design system that integrated the always changing live video feed of the AI camera along with live-streaming generative audio while maintaining a cohesive look and feel to Björk. We wanted the website to never be the same twice - like the soundscape - so we chose to fill the screen with the live stream and created an organic form that slowly dances to the score, masking the camera feed as if the viewer is peering up to the heavens above Manhattan.
Website pulls in the live rooftop camera feed. Daytime with clouds. Still taken from website capture.
Sun setting. Still taken from website capture.
Night time. White spot depicts an airplane. Still taken from website capture.
