Pink Floyd
Sony Music Entertainment has collaborated with Draw & Code to develop a new AR (augmented reality) experience celebrating the release of Pink Floyd’s The Later Years box set. The latest WebAR technology is employed to allow fans to place iconic album artworks into the real world. All the user needs to do to access the AR experience is to go to PFLaterYears.com on a smartphone and follow the on-screen instructions.
Pink Floyd’s The Later Years, released on December 13th 2019, and is an 18-disc set covering the material created by David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright from 1987 onwards, and featuring over 13 hours of unreleased audiovisual material.
This experience explores the album covers from the collected works of The Later Years and enables fans to see animated versions of the artwork appear in their environment via a smartphone. What’s more, this is all done without needing to download an app. Draw & Code has chosen 8th Wall’s WebAR platform to allow for an augmented reality experience that launches straight from a website.
“Exploring the world of Pink Floyd has been a blast. Not only are they one of the finest bands of all time, they have always experimented with creative, visual concepts to expand upon the music — augmented reality sits well in the mediums they have embraced,” said Andy Cooper, Co-Founder of Draw & Code.
There are three main ways to engage with The Later Years artwork. The first is to place elements from the artwork into the world around the user. Monolithic heads rise from the ground and streetlights contort on the pavement as key visual motifs from the world of Pink Floyd flood into the real world.
Web AR
Secondly, the user is invited to capture photos of the experience and share them with friends. There are simple on-screen guides to help make your own take on the album art — this is record sleeve design that can be influenced and shared by fans.
The third element to this playful exploration of Pink Floyd’s output are animated ‘glyphs’ derived from the new logo for the band. The logo can be viewed in 3D, rotating through several states — each alluding to hidden visual codes for each of the albums featured in the box set.
“Each artwork is visually striking with a common theme jumping out from each: the juxtaposition of surrealist interpretations of everyday objects and situations sitting incongruously within our reality,” said Mike Snowdon, Creative Lead at Draw & Code.
Pink Floyd’s The Later Years AR experience can be accessed by a majority of modern smartphones by heading to PFLaterYears.com.
