“Profound”
“Groundbreaking”
“Pioneering”
“Inspired”
“Amazing”
“Captivating”
Beatie Wolfe
“Musical weirdo and visionary" (Vice) Beatie Wolfe has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN role model for innovation, and held a solo exhibition of her ‘world first’ designs at the V&A Museum.
Named by WIRED as one of "22 people changing the world,” Wolfe is at the forefront of pioneering new formats that bridge the physical and digital. Wolfe's latest innovations include a visualisation of 800,000 years of CO2 data, which premiered at the Nobel Prize Summit; a Brain Installation which was exhibited at the London Design Biennale in Somerset House and a Big Oil project which just won Prix Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica.
Other recent projects include the world's first bioplastic record with Michael Stipe and EarthPercent and a new body of work with Brian Eno. Wolfe is also the co-founder of a groundbreaking research project looking at the power of music for dementia.
Highlight Work
Smoke and Mirrors
Methane data x Big Oil ads since the first Earth Day
Project: 2024Winning the Prix Ars Electronica and premiered at SXSW, Smoke and Mirrors by Beatie Wolfe uses art to communicate 6 decades of climate data, specifically rising methane levels, set alongside the verbatim advertising slogans deployed by Big Oil to deny, doubt, and delay climate data and awareness through the decades. This evocative visualization, based on NASA’s Blue Marble photograph and produced in collaboration with Parliament, will be set to “Oh My Heart”, which was released as the world’s first bioplastic record by Beatie Wolfe, Michael Stipe and Brian Eno’s EarthPercent. Smoke and Mirrors follows Wolfe’s multi-award winning CO2 visualisation ‘From Green to Red,’ which was unveiled at the Nobel Prize Summit and was the largest art piece at COP26 - more (+)
imPRINTING:
The Artist’s Brain
A Sonic Self-Portrait
Project: 2023imPRINTING transports visitors inside the artist’s brain via a retro-future “thinking cap” allowing them to tune into and discover its many channels and sonic imprints including conversations, collaborations, music, memory, hopes, fears and dreams. In this sonic self-portrait, “musical weirdo and visionary” Beatie Wolfe presents a new format for the digital age: a data-encoded “thinking cap” tailored by Mr Fish as a counterpart to their award-winning, wearable Album Jacket. Via retro listening stations, plugged into the hat, the audience will be able to listen to and explore the brain’s many channels which include music (limbic system), memory (temporal neocortex), collaborations (medial prefrontal cortex), conversations (Wernicke’s area) with the data related to each “brain channel” ecologically encoded in glass and woven into the cap to be preserved for up to 10,000 years - more (+)
From Green to Red
An interactive environmental protest data art piece
Beatie Wolfe creates a stirring environmental art piece about human impact on the planet, built using 800,000 years of NASA’s climate data. “From Green to Red” (taken from the title of a song Wolfe wrote in 2006 after seeing ‘An Inconvenient Truth') tracks the impact of human behaviour on the planet, creating a stirring visualization of the CO2 concentration in the Earth’s atmosphere, and asks us the question is it too late to turn back? Wolfe’s latest innovation reimagines the music video format (and protest song), taking the audience on a journey through the planet’s timeline. “This piece is about re-presenting data in a way that people can see differently and absorb, using the power of art to make it evocative and relatable,” Wolfe says, “so that people can get a sense of where we are right now” - more (+)
Project: 2020
The World’s First Bioplastic record
REM's Michael Stipe x Beatie Wolfe
The world’s first commercially available bioplastic 12” with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe and Beatie Wolfe was released in support of EarthPercent and sold out within 5 minutes. This bioplastic vinyl, an environmental design solution by Evolution Music, is a genuinely revolutionary moment for both the music industry and record collectors, offering a non-fossil fuel future for vinyl recordings that globally is c180 million LPs (or 30,000 tonnes of PVC) a year - more (+)
Project: 2022
Postcards for Democracy
Collective post art campaign
Artistic visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh & Beatie Wolfe share a love of tangible art forms, in and amongst their futuristic explorations. Kicked off in the summer of 2020 in light of the threat to our 225yr old postal service, at a time that could jeopardize the democracy of the country, Mothersbaugh and Wolfe joined forces for this collective postcard art demonstration. The pair received tens of thousands of postcards from all over the world which were then exhibited at the Rauschenberg Gallery in a 3-month exhibition with highlights then going to the Smithsonian. Rebooted ahead of the 2024 election with the Broad Foundations support - more (+)
Project: 2020 + 2024Highlight ExhibitionS
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Retrospective of Artist’s WorkThe V&A Museum invited Beatie Wolfe to hold a solo exhibition of her world’s first designs for music in the digital age, which range from a theatre for the palm of your hand, a wearable album jacket, an ‘anti-stream’ from the world’s quietest room and a Space beam from the Big Bang Horn - more (+)
Solo Exhibition: 2018
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From Green to RedThe Nobel Prize organisation invited Beatie Wolfe to speak, perform, and show her environmental protest piece ‘From Green To Red’ at its inaugural summit following Sir David Attenborough and Al Gore. Beatie Wolfe was introduced on stage by her friend and space beaming collaborator Nobel Laureate Dr Robert Wilson. Watch her segment above - more (+)
Exhibition + Talk: 2021
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imPRINTING: The Artist’s BrainOriginally supposed to be exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020, then Covid happened, Beatie Wolfe realised her Sonic Self Portrait in the home of cultural innovators Somerset House - more (+)
Exhibition: 2023
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From Green to Red
COP26 invited Beatie Wolfe to project her environmental art piece about human impact on the planet, built using 800,000 years of rising CO2 levels, 550ft wide onto Norman Fosters' iconic Armadillo building. Wolfe joins Olafur Eliasson, JR, and Darren Aronofsky in showing their work at this scale as the largest visual statement of the conference - watch (+)Solo Exhibition: 2021
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From Green to RedMIT invited Beatie to install “From Green to Red” in their Media Lab for MIT Solve and hold the closing keynote titled "Activating Awareness: The Power of Art" on how to make vast and abstract data around global issues feel relatable, evocative, and inspire change - more (+)
Exhibition: 2023
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Postcards for DemocracyArtistic visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh & Beatie Wolfe joined forces for this lockdown art project in support of the postal service and our right to vote. The pairs collective art demonstration received tens of thousands of postcards displayed for a 3-month exhibition at the Rauschenberg Gallery - more (+)
Exhibition: 2021
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The Life RewiredHubCan the union of art, music and technology provoke social change? As part of their award-winning “Life Rewired” programme the Barbican invited Beatie to take over its gallery to explore what it means to be human when technology is changing everything
Exhibition: 2019
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From Green to RedUnveiled for the very first time at the London Design Biennale, the interactive installation of the environmental art piece ‘From Green to Red’ allowed visitors to move their hands over the woven timeline to pull out the specific carbon ppm data & planetary timeline date - more (+)
Exhibition: 2021
Highlight Talks
Brian Eno & Beatie Wolfe at SXSW
Art & Nature
A conversation between musical visionaries Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe about how art can play a vital role in response to the climate emergency. This talk is included in SXSW Iconic Moments listing the best 25 sessions of the last 25 years - info (+)
Talk: 2022
New York Times Climate Hub
Design, Science & Climate
Beatie Wolfe joined Es Devlin in opening The New York Times climate hub at COP26 in Glasgow with a conversation with the NYT's deputy editor about her work, followed by a live performance and presentation of From Green to Red - watch (+)
Exhibition + Talk: 2021
TEDMED Talk
Power of Music & Dementia
Beatie gives a TEDMED talk about the power of music and its core value to humanity, sharing her work with The Utley Foundation and Music for Dementia - more (+)
Talk: 2020
Nobel Prize Summit
Big Data & Our Planet
The Nobel Prize invited Beatie Wolfe to speak, perform, and show ‘From Green To Red’ at its inaugural summit following Sir David Attenborough and Al Gore. Beatie Wolfe was introduced on stage by her friend and collaborator Nobel Laureate Dr Robert Wilson. Watch her segment above - more (+)
Exhibition + Talk: 2021Documentaries
A Barbican Centre Commissioned Documentary
Project: 2019
Orange Juice for the Ears
London’s Barbican Centre commissioned a documentary about Beatie’s work as a highlight of its 2019 ‘Life Rewired’ season, which was directed by Ross Harris. With the season investigating the impact of the pace and extent of technological change in our culture and society and looking at how we can grasp and respond to the seismic shifts these advances will bring about, there are few artists who exemplify this exploration quite as much. - more (+)
Eco-Doc exploring local conservation initiatives using Wolfe’s guitar
Project: 2024
Trees & Seas
Have you ever wondered how the tools of your trade can be crafted with the climate in mind? Artist Beatie Wolfe was inspired to explore just that via her guitar and its materials, taking us on a journey from CalFire’s reclaimed urban wood initiative with Taylor Guitars to NOAA’s abalone rewilding efforts; looking at how we can build new sustainable circular economies, while drawing wisdom from the true custodians of the land - more (+)
Further Work Highlights
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The immersive museum experienceThe Raw Space Chamber tells the story of Raw Space – the world’s first live 360° AR stream – in its new immersive, portable incarnation. Inside this anechoic chamber (wrapped in NASA-grade Mylar linking to Wolfe’s Raw Space Broadcast), visitors can immerse themselves in a magical and ceremonial listening experience, watching the record come to life via a vintage coin-operated viewport (converted into a VR/AR headset) - more (+)
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Raw SpaceRaw Space was released as the world’s first live 360 AR experience and ‘anti-stream’. Combining live 360 stereoscopic video of Wolfe’s physical record stream from the quietest room on earth, with real-time AR animations, the effect was a Fantasia-like live-streamed album, which ran continuously for a week with artwork that evolved every time the record spun. “With ‘Raw Space’, I wanted to create the anti-stream for our current streaming generation and really celebrate the world of the album – its artwork, arc, narrative, music – in a ceremonial and absorbing way that makes the listener feel like they’ve been transported into the world of the album, like I did opening up a record as a kid.” Wolfe follows in the footsteps of Andy Warhol, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg as a collaborator of Bell Labs’ E.A.T. programme - more (+)
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The rawest sound in the Raw SpaceFollowing its launch from the quietest room in the world, Raw Space was beamed into space via the historic Holmdel Horn Antenna, which was used to prove the validity of the Big Bang theory. Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr Robert Wilson (who discovered Cosmic Background Radiation) made the first update to this Historic National Landmark in 50 years to make sure the music of Raw Space got past the earth's atmosphere and into outer space. The Raw Space Broadcast was not the studio version of the album, but the raw anechoic version (no reverb, EQ or audio enhancements) recorded in the Bell Labs Anti-echo Chamber – Wolfe’s idea being that for the first time, raw anechoic sound would enter raw space as a true reflection of our humanity at a time of increased airbrushing, auto-tuning and AI - more (+)
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Collaborating with the World’s Leading DesignersThe Raw Space Album Deck is an update of Wolfe’s intelligent album deck of cards format, originally conceived for Montagu Square as a type of digital cassette tape. Produced in collaboration with ArtCenter College of Design and its Acting Chair of Graphic Design Sean Adams, each of the Raw Space song cards have been designed by a leading international artist - which includes Erik Spiekermann, Marian Bantjes, Astrid Stavro, Lucienne Roberts et al - to reflect their interpretation of Wolfe’s music. Listeners can simply tap the song card to their phone to instantly play the track and access its content—liner notes, lyrics, artwork, music VR videos etc—which is being updated all the time, giving the Album Deck the feeling of a “living” or dynamic vinyl.
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Fashioning Music Into Art: A Truly Tailored Album ReleaseThe Montagu Square Musical Jacket is a reimagining of the record jacket and a truly tailored album release for the 21st century. Wolfe recorded her second album Montagu Square in the former home of Hendrix, McCartney, Ringo, Lennon & Yoko Ono, and in the room where Hendrix wrote ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and McCartney penned ‘Eleanor Rigby’. This live recording was then translated (complete with its ambient sound, resonance of the room and audience applause) into a woven fabric by textiles artist BeatWoven and cut by tailor Mr Fish – who dressed Hendrix, Jagger and Bowie – into the first Musical Jacket of its kind. The Jacket has also been NFC-enabled, allowing people to hear the music of Montagu Square by tapping their phone onto the fabric. Wolfe saw the Montagu Square wearable album jacket as a truly tailored album release for the 21st Century.
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A Vinyl For Your Phone, A Theatre For The Palm Of Your HandFor her debut album Wolfe wanted to put a record (the format she loved) onto a phone (a device now integral to people's listening) and so in collaboration with Design I/O pioneered the 3D Interactive Album App. This app opened up like a record with the liner notes, lyrics, artwork and music. But to give this experience a twist, the Palm Top Theatre was introduced to the release. By slotting your phone into the Palm Top Theatre, it was transformed into a miniature theatre in the palm of your hand and you could watch 8ight's 3D interactive visuals, filmed by Weavers Productions, come to life in a way that recaptured the magic of opening up a record and exploring its artwork
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A contemplation on sun and shadeBeatie Wolfe and Aaron Rose present Solar Signs, an intermedia display of shadow poetry and sun prints. Solar-powered and made from only three ingredients: recycled letters, the sun, and time, the piece captures shadow words revealed as the sun hits the hidden letters, celebrating nature's art and power to create on its own timescale, in ways that human beings often can't see or control. This minimalist art piece also serves as a poignant contemplation on sun and shade for those living in urban heat islands exacerbated by the climate crisis - more (+)
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Safeguarding the world’s most valuable musicThe Global Music Vault (a seed bank equivalent for music) has invited Beatie Wolfe to be part of its Proof of Concept for safeguarding the world's most valuable music using green and durable storage technology. Beatie’s music will be included alongside the Polar Music Prize, The National Library of New Zealand, International Library of African Music and the International Music Council - more (+)
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the Limited Edition Stamp-SheetArtistic inventors Beatie Wolfe & Money Mark present an “A-Z of California’s Flora, Fauna and Funga” stamp-sheet & poster composed of 26 illustrations representing key species of the three kingdoms in the Golden State.
Not only was the beautiful limited edition print designed to make good on decades of Tri-State centric A-Zs in schools by reflecting the true wildlife of California, but it was also designed to promote inclusive "fauna, flora and funga" language and ensure that fungi - which are critical to all life on Earth - are integrated into future conservation strategies. Within this A-Z, the abalone takes a central role as a critical species of California that is under severe threat with Beatie Wolfe involved in NOAA’s rewilding conservation efforts - more (+)
Other Highlights
Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica
The world's most time-honored Prix Ars Electronica announces that its "Golden Nica 2024" will be awarded to Beatie Wolfe’s ‘Smoke and Mirrors’ - more (+)
Webby’s Anthem Awards Win
From Green to Red by Beatie Wolfe wins Silver at Webbys inaugural Anthem Awards in a category where Nat Geo took Gold and Disney took Bronze - more (+)
UN Women
Chosen to be 1 of 9 innovators to represent the UN Women “Impossible to Ignore” campaign appearing all across the world from Times Square to London Underground
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Wired magazine’s “22 People Changing the World”
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Radio Show
Orange Juice for the Ears with Beatie Wolfe, on LA’s dublab radio, explores the power of music across space, science, art, health, film and technology by talking to the leading luminaries in each field from Nobel Prize laureates to anti-whaling captains - tune in + download podcast (+)
Writing & Curation
Beatie Wolfe has a column with London’s Evening Standard and is a contributor for The Nation, Dezeen Magazine, Design Milk, the Virtual Design Festival, Birdy Magazine in addition to curating the Los Angeles Times’s inaugural NewStory festival & hosting 16hrs of Pandora radio at SXSW
Calm Commissions
Calm the #1 healthcare app invited Beatie Wolfe to be one of its first contributor and the first to contribute original content. Already helping millions to find space and rest further sleep soundtracks and stories are in development - read more (+)
