Walt Disney Concert Hall Celebrates L.A. Philharmonic with Digital Dreams

On the 27th of September, there will be a 12-minute performance, inspired by the history of the Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Google Arts & Culture, and media artist Refik Anadol have partnered up to create digital art that will light up the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Photographs, printed programs, as well as audio and video recordings of Philharmonic were digitized and algorithmically crunched to come together in the most ingenious way. The centennial celebration is divided into 3 stages:

Photography is by Dustin Downing

The First Stage of the Walt Disney Concert Hal is the “Centennial Memories,”

In this stage, data from the Philharmonic history will be projected onto the facade of the building.

The partnership has created a series of digital projections, specifically designed for WDCH dreams, from the L.A. Philharmonic orchestra digital archives. 45 terabytes of images and recordings have been converted into millions of data points. Manipulating these data points with deep neural networks, the partnership has created three-dimensional displays. These projections fall on the stainless steel facade of the Gehry-designed structure.

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1. 10 Extraordinary Concert Hall Designs

Photography is by Dustin Downing

Mr. Anadol, imagines Gehry’s building to be artificial intelligence, which recalls the orchestra’s past and dreams about its future. A soundtrack, by sound designers Parag K Mittal, Robert Thomas, and Kerim Karaoglu, accompanies the light show. The music is also taken from the archives of the LA Philharmonic—sorted into thematic compositions using algorithms.

The second stage – “Consciousness”,

The building processes the 44.5 terabytes of information—every note, every trumpet, every symphony, and every oboe the orchestra has played.

The last stage – the “Dream”

This is when the concert hall fuses it all, in a form of fantasy, to “hallucinate” as Refik Anadol says.

The Ira Gershwin Gallery, located inside the concert hall, will have an installation—a mirrored room, where participants can interact with the archives of the LA Philharmonic. Inside a U-shaped room, this installation has a 2-channel projection.

Photography is by Dustin Downing

Even as the show mines the past of the Philharmonic, WDCH Dreams talks about computing. Using some of the same Artificial intelligence algorithms that are used in facial recognition. Mr. Anadol’s idea that a building can think and dream, is a creative version of the internet of things.
The exhibit opens to the public on September 28 and will remain open for the centennial season.