To hear this music you have to be there. Literally

The music industry has sometimes struggled to find its feet in the digital world. In this lovely talk, TED Fellow Ryan Holladay tells us why he is experimenting with what he describes as "location-aware music." This programming and musical feat involves hundreds of geotagged segments of sounds that only play when a listener is physically nearby. (Filmed at TED@BCG.)

(Music)

For any of you who have visited
or lived in New York City,

these shots might start to look familiar.

This is Central Park,

one of the most beautifully designed

public spaces in America.

But to anyone who hasn't visited,

these images can't really fully convey.

To really understand Central Park,

you have to physically be there.

Well, the same is true of the music,

which my brother and I composed and mapped

specifically for Central Park.

(Music)

I'd like to talk to you today a little bit about the work

that my brother Hays and I are doing --

That's us there. That's both of us actually —

specifically about a concept that we've been
developing over the last few years,

this idea of location-aware music.

Now, my brother and I, we're musicians

and music producers.

We've been working together since,

well, since we were kids, really.

But recently, we've become
more and more interested

in projects where art

and technology intersect,

from creating sight-specific audio

and video installation

to engineering interactive concerts.

But today I want to focus on this concept

of composition for physical space.

But before I go too much further into that,

let me tell you a little bit about how we got started

with this idea.

My brother and I were living in New York City

when the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude

did their temporary installation, The Gates,

in Central Park.

Hundreds of these brightly-colored sculptures

decorated the park for a number of weeks,

and unlike work that's exhibited

in a more neutral space,

like on the walls of a gallery or a museum,

this was work that was really in dialogue

with this place,

and in a lot of ways, The Gates

was really a celebration

of Frederick Olmsted's incredible design.

This was an experience that stayed with us

for a long time, and years later,

my brother and I moved back to Washington, D.C.,

and we started to ask the question,

would it be possible,

in the same way that The Gates

responded to the physical layout of the park,

to compose music for a landscape?

Which brought us to this.

(Music)

On Memorial Day, we released "The National Mall,"

a location-aware album

released exclusively as a mobile app

that uses the device's built-in GPS functionality

to sonically map the entire park

in our hometown of Washington, D.C.

Hundreds of musical segments

are geo-tagged throughout the entire park

so that as a listener traverses the landscape,

a musical score is actually unfolding around them.

So this is not a playlist or a list of songs

intended for the park,

but rather an array of distinct melodies and rhythms

that fit together like pieces of a puzzle

and blend seamlessly

based on a listener's chosen trajectory.

So think of this as

a choose-your-own-adventure of an album.

Let's take a closer look.

Let's look at one example here.

So using the app,

as you make your way towards the grounds

surrounding the Washington Monument,

you hear the sounds of instruments warming up,

which then gives way to the sound of a mellotron

spelling out a very simple melody.

This is then joined by the sound of sweeping violins.

Keep walking, and a full choir joins in,

until you finally reach the top of the hill

and you're hearing the sound of drums and fireworks

and all sorts of musical craziness,

as if all of these sounds are radiating out

from this giant obelisk that punctuates

the center of the park.

But were you to walk in the opposite direction,

this entire sequence happens in reverse.

And were you to actually exit
the perimeter of the park,

the music would fade to silence,

and the play button would disappear.

We're sometimes contacted by
people in other parts of the world

who can't travel to the United States,

but would like to hear this record.

Well, unlike a normal album,

we haven't been able to accommodate this request.

When they ask for a C.D. or an MP3 version,

we just can't make that happen,

and the reason is because

this isn't a promotional app

or a game to promote or accompany

the release of a traditional record.

In this case, the app is the work itself,

and the architecture of the landscape

is intrinsic to the listening experience.

Six months later, we did a location-aware album

for Central Park,

a park that is over two times
the size of the National Mall,

with music spanning from the Sheep's Meadow

to the Ramble to the Reservoir.

Currently, my brother and I are working on

projects all over the country,

but last spring we started a project,

here actually at Stanford's

Experimental Media Art Department,

where we're creating our largest
location-aware album to date,

one that will span the entirety of Highway 1

here on the Pacific Coast.

But what we're doing, integrating GPS with music,

is really just one idea.

But it speaks to a larger vision

for a music industry that's sometimes struggled

to find its footing in this digital age,

that they begin to see these new technologies

not simply as ways of adding bells and whistles

to an existing model,

but to dream up entirely new ways

for people to interact with

and experience music.

Thank you.

(Applause)