IBM + JAMES MURPHY: The US OPEN SESSIONS

We turned tennis data into music, in real-time…

huh? HOW?! JAMES MURPHY?
IBM tracks all the data at the US Open, and we partnered with James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem fame) to turn it into music. We created a custom-built algorithm to turn data points from more than 400 hours of tennis play into music cues, like pitch and tempo, that produced real-time soundtracks for each match. TRANSLATION: 187 different pieces of music wrote themselves in real time, as the matches happened.

James… you explain…

Or our case study works too.

Take a listen to my two favorite tracks while you scroll.

See tennis. Hear music. In real time. On any device.

The music was streamed on a mobile first website that was both a music visualizer and a tennis score tracker. So when you heard a change in the music, you saw what happened in the match to cause it. A music lab let you play with the algorithm, and info on the tech used to create the experience was also featured.

Sessions at the Us Open

We also created an installation on site, where tennis goers could stand under, what I call, “Sound Umbrellas” to fully hear the match they were watching and follow along while away from their seats.

Sessions was Shareable

The entire experience was shareable from each realtime play, to the 187 different track covers, to the gifs of James in some short shorts. To keep our audience engaged, we created a program of assets to be shared out over the two weeks of the event.

The Album

James created a full album using those 400 hours worth of live streaming music as a soundboard, essentially, he remixed his favorite matches to produce Remixes Made With Tennis Data, which dropped Dec. 19 to some pretty nice reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and KEXP.