Gretchen Kupferschmid-Looking Outwards-04

Mixing both art with experience design, the hotel Sister City in NYC has a special sound installation in their lobby. Through a collaboration between musician and composer Julianna Barwick and Mircrosoft this project utilized Microsoft’s Custom Vision Service which utilizes artificial intelligence to track and analyze various elements of the Sister City environment through a camera on the roof. Through this knowledge, it then triggers the sound specific to what the camera has recognized. For example, clouds play a different sound than birds, and as things occur in the environment, a “song” is produced in the lobby. I find this extremely interesting because it creates a generative music installation that although is very technical, its being made by the natural environment around you. It also allows Barwick to see her own sound scores become something of their own as they are controlled by “outside forces”.

https://www.microsoft.com/inculture/musicxtech/sister-city-hotel-julianna-barwick-ai-soundscape/