WDCH Dreams
In celebration of our 2018/19 Centennial season, the Los Angeles Philharmonic collaborated with media artist Refik Anadol to celebrate our history and explore our future. Using machine learning algorithms, Anadol and his team developed a unique machine intelligence approach to the LA Phil digital archives – 45 terabytes of data. The results were stunning visualizations for WDCH Dreams, a project that was both a week-long public art installation projected onto the building’s exterior skin and a season-long immersive exhibition inside the Ira Gershwin Gallery.
Explore the details below to relive the full performance and learn about what it took to make the equivalent of 40,000 hours of audio from 16,471 performances not only come to life, but dream.
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WDCH Dreams
SEPT 28, 2018 – OCT 6, 2018
Using machine learning algorithms, Anadol and his team developed a unique machine intelligence approach to the LA Phil digital archives, allowing unprecedented access to the orchestra’s past in non-traditional ways. During the commencement week for the Centennial season, his public art installation projected transformed archival materials onto the exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall in animated, data-driven patterns, seeming to give consciousness to the architectural landmark.
#WDCHDreams #LAPhil100
WDCH Dreams Companion Installation
Inside Walt Disney Concert Hall, in the Ira Gershwin Gallery, was an immersive and interactive companion installation, offering a unique, one-on-one experience for each gallery visitor. The exhibition presented the entire LA Phil digital archives in a non-linear fashion. The visitor, via a touchscreen interface, could interact with the archives in multiple ways: via a sunburst timeline; through curated moments highlighting milestones in the LA Phil’s 100-year history; and by delving into to the entire data universe that can be uniquely manipulated by each gallery visitor. The space was re-imagined as a mirrored U-shaped room with two-channel projection. Visuals were projected onto the mirrored surface giving the visitor a truly immersive, 360-degree experience.
The Ira Gershwin Gallery exhibit opened to the public on September 28, 2018 and ran up until September 2019.
Digital Dreams, Analog Past
When the Los Angeles Philharmonic Archives opened its vault to media artist Refik Anadol, he created, with the help of Google’s computational algorithms, the stunning visualizations of WDCH Dreams. In the process of pulling together 45 terabytes of data for the WDCH Dreams project – the equivalent of seventy-five million pages – we gained a deeper appreciation of other forms of information capture and storage. This page provides six reel stories about the LA Phil’s many recorded performances. The reel-to-reel tapes were captured by photographer Elif Karakoc for the WDCH Dreams project.
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April 16, 1959
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December 6, 1964
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April 4, 1968
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January 6, 1978
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October 26, 1978
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