In a move sure to delight space enthusiasts, Beck enthusiasts, people who really like to get high, and especially those in the center of that sizable Venn diagram, Beck has released a visual counterpart to his 2019 album Hyperspace. The result of a partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Hyperspace: A.I. Exploration pairs images from NASA missions and artificial intelligence with the tracks from Hyperspace, and whatever, just go grab your vape pen or those legal edibles you got last week and hit play.
As partnerships go, this one is pretty spot on, and not just because the album has the word ‘space’ in the title. Hyperspace flows forth from the part of Beck’s mind that made Sea Change, and the mid-tempo dreaminess of the whole affair suits the “wow, the universe sure is amazing” vibe of the visuals perfectly.
As for those visuals, they’re incredibly cool. “See Through” shows us Juno, though it mutates and changes into some seriously trippy shapes. The sources of “Stratosphere” and “Dark Places” are the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, respectively. All rely on artificial intelligence to transform the footage, data, and images into what you see throughout.
Anyway, well done, Beck. Thanks for reminding us that science > Scientology.
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