Sigur Rós collaborates with tech start-up Magic Leap on new VR experience

Tech start-up Magic Leap has teamed up with Icelandic megastars Sigur Rós to create a new audiovisual augmented reality experience called Tónandi.

Tónandi is the result of a half-decade long collaboration and is designed specifically for the Magic Leap One headset. The app features unreleased music by the band that can be manipulated by the user by interacting with the visuals around them.

With Tónandi, Sigur Rós and Magic Leap have teamed up to provide us with the opportunity to interact with the audio we hear, changing the way we experience music.

Listening to music is often a rather passive experience, but now Tónandi gives us an opportunity to interact with and alter the music we hear

Sigur Rós previewed the experience recently in an Instagram post, calling the jellyfish-like creatures “sound spirits” and describing the app as “a place where spatial sounds are visible all around you and ready to respond to every interaction.”

sigur rós and magic leap have been working together for five years, exploring and expanding the frontiers of musical creation within ‘mixed reality’. tónandi is the first fruit of that collaboration, and perhaps even a glimpse of the future of music. . together we have created a place in the here and now, where the ‘sound spirits’ of sigur rós’s music can be played with and altered using your hands. a place where spatial sounds are visible all around you and ready to respond to every interaction. tónandi is a step into a new reality. . @sigurros @magicleap #tónandi

A post shared by sigur rós (@sigurros) on Aug 9, 2018 at 7:22am PDT

Magic Leap yesterday announced it would begin shipping the Magic Leap One headset, which will be available for a $2,295 in six US cities: Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Via Pitchfork.