On Wednesday, August 12, singer-songwriter Beck released a visual album version of his 2019 LP Hyperspace. The visual album, titled Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration, is a collaboration between Beck and NASA JPL.
The images behind each video on the visual album are sourced from NASA missions and take the viewer on a virtual tour of the universe, with lots of stops in our very own solar system. Art, science, and music are cross-pollinated as artificial intelligence is used to morph and meld NASA data to Beck’s songs.
The visual album includes one Earthly video. The video for track “Hyperlife” was trained on images from the International Space Station and the NASA / U.S Geological Survey’s Landsat 8 satellite mission. The “Hyperlife” video viewer watches as the abstract beauty of our planet morphs from geographic location-to-location, flowing with the sound of the etherial song.
In the “Hyperlife” video, Landsat 8 adds color to what NPR’s Matthew Perpetua dubbed a technicolor break-up album.
Tracks include:
“Die Waiting” | Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)
“Hyperlife” | Landsat 8, International Space Station
“Uneventful Days” | Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Apollo 12
“Saw Lightning” | Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Curiosity Rover, Viking 1 Orbiter
“See Through” | Juno Galileo, Cassini-Huygens
“Chemical” | Cassini-Huygens
“Stratosphere” | Spitzer Space Telescope
“Hyperspace” | Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)
“Everlasting Nothing” | Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
“Star” | Hubble Space Telescope (HST), Swift, Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope
“Dark Places” | Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Related reading:
+ Beck Joins Forces With NASA for Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration, SPIN
+ Beck Teams With NASA for ‘Hyperspace’ Visual Album, Rolling Stone
+ Beck Teams With NASA for New Hyperspace Visual Album: Watch, Pitchfork
News brief by Laura E.P. Rocchio
