Studio 52 is a community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.
Audrey Harrer wants you to be able to see her music, and then eat it — more or less.
The Boston choral-pop singer’s latest experiment takes form in her new track “Fortune Smiles,” which takes listeners inside a 360 Lyric Cyclorama. The almost 3-D experience offers a glimpse inside a virtual sealed music box, created by Harrer, that contains the inner inspirations and workings of the tune. Offline, she’s distributing the track via codes on not beer, not packets of lube, but fortune cookies.
“The 360 Lyric Cyclorama is a digital art object to experience the song from inside,” Harrer tells Vanyaland. “It spins like a CD, cylinder, or record would— and if you somehow found yourself in the grooves, this is what this song would look like. The cyclorama is a sealed music box where you are a reflection-less viewer in a disco-like mirrored interior. The lyrics contemplate personal will versus plain luck, all while seeking doors and interventions.”
Like many artists in the digital and streaming age, Harrer wanted to establish a tangible connection between her music and fans outside of the seemingly bygone days of records and CDs. Her highly-personalized distribution method consists of fairytale-colored cookies containing a fortune (the URL download), all tucked inside handmade origami boxes.
“When I wrote ‘Fortune Smiles’ as a single, I really wanted to explore new ways to share music with my audience,” she notes. “A fortune cookie seemed like the perfect thing. I wanted it to feel a little magical (think Alice in Wonderland) so I went with a teal cookie with a lavender fortune that had the song info and URL on it. Over the last few months I started passing them out or leaving them random places just to see if anyone would stumble upon the track (FYI, I discovered people don’t really eat random blue fortune cookies).”
Adding to the palpable theme, Harrer will also be selling limited-edition reflection boxes that contain some of the actual objects featured in the 360 Lyric Cyclorama, offering up a piece of her digital world.
“I like the idea of alternative mediums to release music on. Recorded music has been mostly freed from the objects it was once commercially bound to like cassettes, CDs, records, 8-tracks, cylinders, or whatever else— but artists and audiences still crave something tangible to connect with,” Harrer says. “Artists really have an opportunity now to re-conceptualize the physical and digital release to create something that enhances and supports the meaning of their music— and lots of folks are experimenting with this.”
Check out the video below, and grab your own fortune cookie here.