IBM x GRAMMY Museum®
Music Discovery Interface
Year
2026An interactive installation that transforms music history into a collective discovery experience.
Context
The IBM and GRAMMY Museum® partnership needed a more engaging way to immerse people in music, making discovery feel active, playful and shared.
Approach
We combined 150 years of music history with interface design, spatial interaction and IBM watsonx to create an experience where visitors could follow curiosity, uncover connections and share discoveries in real time.
Impact
The installation introduced a more active form of engagement in which visitors gather, explore, and share discoveries in real time, giving the GRAMMY Museum® a new way to make music history accessible to a wider audience.
We built an agentic system that transforms 150 years of music history into a flowing interface of connections, brought to life through play, curiosity and shared discovery.
Collective discovery in motion
Musical Crossroads invites visitors into a journey of discovery that can be personal, shared or passed between people. Music flows into view as a continuous ‘river’ of artists, recordings, scenes, and eras, giving each visitor a way to collect what catches their attention and follow it more deeply.
As people interact, connections begin to surface. A familiar artist can open into an unexpected scene, one recording can lead across decades, and individual choices can become shared moments around the table. Music history becomes something visitors can trace together, shaped by relationships, curiosity and exchange.
As people interact, connections begin to surface. A familiar artist can open into an unexpected scene, one recording can lead across decades, and individual choices can become shared moments around the table. Music history becomes something visitors can trace together, shaped by relationships, curiosity and exchange.
Built to come to life in various spaces, the installation can be configured to assume distinct visual and spatial expressions, adapting its character to different contexts and audiences.
“The idea really is to let visitors look at music that they know and love, but also turn them on to sounds and music scenes that they may never have heard about.” — Jasen Emmons, Chief Curator and VP of Curatorial Affairs, GRAMMY Museum®
An agentic system for music
At its core, the installation is powered by a scalable knowledge graph, where custom AI agents work with a curated music archive behind the scenes.
Using watsonx, the system reads across artists, recordings and eras, mapping how influence travels through scenes and generations. Rather than presenting this complexity directly, the interface uses it to shape what visitors see, guiding discovery in a way that feels intuitive and open-ended.
Behind the scenes, the system is designed to evolve. New artists, tracks and stories can be added or updated over time, then woven into the wider network so the experience can grow alongside the archive.
Using watsonx, the system reads across artists, recordings and eras, mapping how influence travels through scenes and generations. Rather than presenting this complexity directly, the interface uses it to shape what visitors see, guiding discovery in a way that feels intuitive and open-ended.
Behind the scenes, the system is designed to evolve. New artists, tracks and stories can be added or updated over time, then woven into the wider network so the experience can grow alongside the archive.
This experience points to a future where cultural archives can become more open, responsive and participatory, giving audiences new ways to follow curiosity, encounter unfamiliar histories and discover how culture connects across time.
Credits
Commissioned by
- IBM
- GRAMMY Museum®
Executive Creative Direction
- Xander Marritt
Creative Direction
- Max Palmer
Production
- Kerem Demirayak
Design
- Max Palmer
- Derya Ermetin
- Samuel Lewek
Development
- Bruno Imbrizi
- Casper Wortmann
- Daan Rongen
- Guido Schmidt
- Yi-Wen Lin
Communication
- Alexa Chirnoagă
