Hotel lobby music is supposed to be bland. But what if it was composed by Björk and driven by a Microsoft AI system? And what if the music varied according to the objects and patterns in the sky directly above the hotel?
Björk has collaborated with Microsoft and New York’s Sister City hotel to create Kórsafn. It’s an AI-powered composition that builds on the generative soundscape concept that Sister City launched with Julianna Barwick in 2019. In Icelandic, “kór” means “choral” and “safn” means “archives.”
When you enter the Sister City lobby, you hear recombined snippets of various arrangements written by Björk. Some are performed by the Hamrahlid Choir, which is an acclaimed 50-person Icelandic choir. It’s considered a national treasure in its own right. Björk performed in the Hamrahlid Choir when she was younger.
The images in the installation are captured by a camera mounted on the roof of Sister City. The AI component uses those images to determine which snippets to recombine from Björk’s 17-year choral archive.
According to Microsoft, the AI system is continuously “learning to identify more objects in the sky above the hotel.” It looks to find and understand with better accuracy an increasingly wide range of objects. For example, it doesn’t just find clouds, but “denotes the density and type of cloud, whether cumulus or nimbus.” And it doesn’t just find birds, but learns to “distinguish an entire flock of birds.”
Sister City has a live feed of the roof camera on its website, allowing you to see the NYC skyline and hear how Björk and Microsoft AI interpret it in real time.
