Health are pioneering a new music format with the use of 3D printing and augmented reality. Album track ‘Dark Enough’ has been transformed into a physical 3D-printed sculpture which is created from a sound wave that is read by a mobile app (aka the “stylus”).
The idea is analogous to a vinyl record in terms of encoding and decoding sound onto plastic. When you hold the app over the sculpture (the totem), the screen comes to life and the song plays; it also allows you to shoot lasers at the object and move around it within the screen to see more.
Reify, a brand new startup, is part of New Inc (the startup incubator backed by the New Museum in NYC) and has board members from MakerBot, Google and eBay.
The new album has generated a huge amount of critical acclaim; the band’s technology-first approach to the promotion of the record has picked up a lot of attention in the world of tech, with sites such as Wired getting their hands on the track with the new tech.
The team have sold a total of 30 totems and they should be hitting UK retailers soon. There have been 164 app downloads, which is an average of 5.4 downloads per totem. Each user is returning to the totem an average of three times. Given the small amount of totems sold, we feel that is a good result. In addition, rips of ‘Dark Enough’ started to travel from the app, being picked up by Stereogum and Pitchfork (before coming down).
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