(This article appeared in WIRED Magazine).

Thomas Dolby: Pop Star Hacker

Thomas Dolby, an unaffected man in grey jeans, black vest and a baseball
cap purposefully void of insignia, wandered through the Beverly Hilton's
lobby bar, relieved, it seemed, that not a single starry-eyed fan bothered
him for even as much as an autograph. 

At Digital World earlier this summer, Thomas Dolby was not a rock star, he
was a programmer, and those who approached him asked about his concept of
object-oriented music, not his chart-topping albums. 

Earlier in the day Dolby astounded the Digital World crowd with a
demonstration of his compositional skills. While he wasn't allowed to show
the visuals his music represented - it came from a forthcoming location-
based entertainment installation from Evans & Sutherland and Iwerks - he
could let the audience listen to them. First he played a relatively
mundane stream of ordinary musical sounds. But here's the neat twist -
each of those sounds is attached to a visual element in the virtual game
world, and each is tuned to the others, so that a player's actions (what
she sees, when she moves, where she goes) produce a symphonic score
stunningly reflective of the story as it is experienced. 

To demonstrate, Dolby played a recorded soundtrack he created by moving
through the virtual environment. The result was a rich, filmic score that
in itself told a story of apprehension, danger, flight, and tranquility.
The usually cynical Digital World crowd gave him a rousing ovation. 

Dolby became intrigued with immersive VR a few years ago and saw in it the
kernel of a new type of musical expression. "In the interactive age,
composers are going to have to give up total control of how their music is
heard," he says. "In a way, you're responsible for laying out the musical
possibilities, but the player triggers them." 

To further his vision, Dolby created Headspace, an audio studio with
several projects already in the works. In collaboration with Intel Corp.
and homebrew VR pioneer Eric Gullichsen, Dolby has authored a goggles-and-
glove-based VR program that allows a user to wander around a classical
string quartet as it plays. "You can put your ear right next to the
violin," Dolby says. The program will debut at an undisclosed museum in
New York later this year. 

Dolby is also working on an interactive version of Francis Ford Coppola's
The Conversation, which he plans to release in CD-ROM form next year. The
interactive ride from Iwerks and Evans & Sutherland will debut at the
International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions convention in
Los Angeles this November. 

Dolby is decidedly nonchalant about his transition from pop star to
programmer behind the scenes. "I'll still make albums," he says. "But I
like the fact of removing my entity, of making the player the star. In a
way the most unpleasant thing about my career has been the celebrity."
Headspace Studios: +1 (213) 876 0358. 

John Battelle