TED@BCG San Francisco
Ryan Holladay: To hear this music you have to be there. Literally
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In this lovely talk, TED Fellow Ryan Holladay shares his experiment with "location-aware music." This programming and musical feat involves hundreds of geotagged segments of sounds that only play when a listener is physically nearby, creating a magical sense of presence.
Ryan Holladay - Musician
Brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay explore the intersection of art and technology with an emphasis on music and sound, with projects ranging from multichannel audio installations to interactive performances to mobile apps. Full bio
Brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay explore the intersection of art and technology with an emphasis on music and sound, with projects ranging from multichannel audio installations to interactive performances to mobile apps. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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For any of you who have visited
or lived in New York City,
or lived in New York City,
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these shots might start to look familiar.
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This is Central Park,
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one of the most beautifully designed
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public spaces in America.
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But to anyone who hasn't visited,
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these images can't really fully convey.
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To really understand Central Park,
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you have to physically be there.
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Well, the same is true of the music,
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which my brother and I composed and mapped
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specifically for Central Park.
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(Music)
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I'd like to talk to you today a little bit about the work
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that my brother Hays and I are doing --
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That's us there. That's both of us actually —
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specifically about a concept that we've been
developing over the last few years,
developing over the last few years,
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this idea of location-aware music.
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Now, my brother and I, we're musicians
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and music producers.
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We've been working together since,
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well, since we were kids, really.
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But recently, we've become
more and more interested
more and more interested
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in projects where art
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and technology intersect,
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from creating sight-specific audio
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and video installation
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to engineering interactive concerts.
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But today I want to focus on this concept
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of composition for physical space.
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But before I go too much further into that,
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let me tell you a little bit about how we got started
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with this idea.
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My brother and I were living in New York City
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when the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude
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did their temporary installation, The Gates,
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in Central Park.
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Hundreds of these brightly-colored sculptures
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decorated the park for a number of weeks,
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and unlike work that's exhibited
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in a more neutral space,
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like on the walls of a gallery or a museum,
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this was work that was really in dialogue
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with this place,
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and in a lot of ways, The Gates
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was really a celebration
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of Frederick Olmsted's incredible design.
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This was an experience that stayed with us
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for a long time, and years later,
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my brother and I moved back to Washington, D.C.,
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and we started to ask the question,
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would it be possible,
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in the same way that The Gates
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responded to the physical layout of the park,
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to compose music for a landscape?
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Which brought us to this.
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(Music)
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On Memorial Day, we released "The National Mall,"
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a location-aware album
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released exclusively as a mobile app
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that uses the device's built-in GPS functionality
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to sonically map the entire park
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in our hometown of Washington, D.C.
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Hundreds of musical segments
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are geo-tagged throughout the entire park
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so that as a listener traverses the landscape,
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a musical score is actually unfolding around them.
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So this is not a playlist or a list of songs
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intended for the park,
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but rather an array of distinct melodies and rhythms
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that fit together like pieces of a puzzle
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and blend seamlessly
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based on a listener's chosen trajectory.
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So think of this as
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a choose-your-own-adventure of an album.
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Let's take a closer look.
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Let's look at one example here.
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So using the app,
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as you make your way towards the grounds
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surrounding the Washington Monument,
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you hear the sounds of instruments warming up,
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which then gives way to the sound of a mellotron
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spelling out a very simple melody.
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This is then joined by the sound of sweeping violins.
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Keep walking, and a full choir joins in,
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until you finally reach the top of the hill
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and you're hearing the sound of drums and fireworks
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and all sorts of musical craziness,
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as if all of these sounds are radiating out
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from this giant obelisk that punctuates
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the center of the park.
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But were you to walk in the opposite direction,
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this entire sequence happens in reverse.
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And were you to actually exit
the perimeter of the park,
the perimeter of the park,
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the music would fade to silence,
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and the play button would disappear.
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We're sometimes contacted by
people in other parts of the world
people in other parts of the world
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who can't travel to the United States,
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but would like to hear this record.
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Well, unlike a normal album,
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we haven't been able to accommodate this request.
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When they ask for a C.D. or an MP3 version,
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we just can't make that happen,
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and the reason is because
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this isn't a promotional app
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or a game to promote or accompany
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the release of a traditional record.
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In this case, the app is the work itself,
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and the architecture of the landscape
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is intrinsic to the listening experience.
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Six months later, we did a location-aware album
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for Central Park,
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a park that is over two times
the size of the National Mall,
the size of the National Mall,
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with music spanning from the Sheep's Meadow
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to the Ramble to the Reservoir.
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Currently, my brother and I are working on
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projects all over the country,
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but last spring we started a project,
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here actually at Stanford's
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Experimental Media Art Department,
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where we're creating our largest
location-aware album to date,
location-aware album to date,
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one that will span the entirety of Highway 1
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here on the Pacific Coast.
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But what we're doing, integrating GPS with music,
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is really just one idea.
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But it speaks to a larger vision
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for a music industry that's sometimes struggled
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to find its footing in this digital age,
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that they begin to see these new technologies
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not simply as ways of adding bells and whistles
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to an existing model,
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but to dream up entirely new ways
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for people to interact with
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and experience music.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ryan Holladay - MusicianBrothers Ryan and Hays Holladay explore the intersection of art and technology with an emphasis on music and sound, with projects ranging from multichannel audio installations to interactive performances to mobile apps.
Why you should listen
The Holladay brothers have done pioneering work in location-aware music composition: music created and mapped to a physical space, released as mobile apps, that use a mobile device’s GPS to dynamically alter the music as the listener traverses a landscape. Their first production, “The National Mall,” a location-aware piece mapped to the Mall in Washington, DC, was described by music critic Chris Richards “magical...like using GPS to navigate a dream.” They went on to create similar works for Central Park in New York and for SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas, and are engaged in a long-term project of sonically mapping the entirety of the Pacific Coast Highway. Ryan is a 2013 TED Fellow.
Ryan Holladay | Speaker | TED.com