Music of the Sails is a creative collaboration between Sydney Opera House, the University of New South Wales’ Interactive Media Lab and music technologists Uncanny Valley. 

The ground-breaking project was an ambitious 50th anniversary digital artwork that reimagined the sounds of Sydney Opera House, live-streamed for 744 hours throughout October 2023. It was a fusion of architecture, generative music techniques and cutting-edge artificial intelligence methods, which together revealed the Opera House as a living and dynamic work of art in action.

As the House celebrated our 50th year, it dreamt about the future, and contemplated the ways in which technology will impact on creativity and performance. In Music of the Sails, it flipped the relationship between the building and the art that inhabits its walls. What if the House itself could stand in the spotlight on stage? What would it sound like? What would it sing to us?  

A generative, audio-visual artwork made from data, artificial intelligence and field recordings, including the sounds of the Concert Hall’s grand organ, Music of the Sails augmented the sonic secrets of the building in a way that had never been heard before.  

WATCHstream.sydneyoperahouse.com

1,2 Installation in TIDE, Sydney Opera House, photography by Daniel Boud
3,4 Foley capture underneath Sydney Opera House
5,6 Screenshots from 744 hour generative livestream