Freelance Creative Director Bob Bjarke, formerly of Meta, shared an amusing new mixed reality concept on Twitter centered around discovering new music and creating playlists with virtual records.
Making mix tapes, burning CDs, or flipping through LPs at a record store—these formerly social activities are now algorithmic utilities, done alone on a 2D screen. But what if we could use the immersive tools of mixed reality to make a more fun and social music experience? pic.twitter.com/Y11OseSCIX
— Bob Bjarke (@bobarke) May 4, 2023
Bjarke shared footage of Wreckommendation Engine, a prototype experience he created during the Meta Quest Presence Platform Hackathon last week with Unity developers @RJdoesVR and Jeremy Kesten, 3D artist and prototype Joe Kane and immersive sound designer David Urrutia.
Wreckommendation Engine presents users with a virtual record player and crate of records, positioned on a real life surface using mixed reality passthrough on Quest Pro. The user can grab records out of the crate and listen to them by placing them on the turntable. If you like the music, you can throw it against a designated nearby wall to save it. If you hate it, you can throw it against a different wall to smash it into pieces.
If you smash too many tracks, they will eventually come back to life as a killer robot made up of vintage electronics and hi-fi equipment. You can destroy it by throwing more records at it.
The experience integrates with Spotify and uses its API to present you with new tracks, take note of your preferences and compile your saved tracks into a playlist for later.
This is just a proof-of-concept prototype and a bit of fun, so it’s unlikely to ever see the light of day for Quest users. Nonetheless, it’s an amusing concept and a cool way to bring more physicality into music discovery in the age of streaming. In a follow-up tweet, Bjarke said that they wanted to “use the immersive tools of mixed reality to make a more fun and social music experience,” given that “formerly social activities” like making mixtapes and burning CDs “are now algorithmic utilities, done along on a 2D screen.”
