Anti-interactive Music Site Aims to Calm Digital Junkies

Danish folk singer Marc Facchini has collaborated with Copenhagen-based design agency Hello Great Works, creative community and think tank think.dk and New York design company Firstborn to create Himmelmekanik.dk an innovative online music installation where you can listen to Facchini’s new album for free – but only for as long as you don’t do anything else in your browser.

We live in an age of the fidget, where a constant multi-platform influx of data/ents/comment/images has us all worrying at mouses and scratching away at screens like demented meerkats with ADHD.

Marc Facchini

This project invites you to tell your push notifications to push off and immerse yourself in the calm digital space that is Himmelmekanik.dk (Heavenly Mechanics), a free music service where you can do nothing but slow down and listen to the critically acclaimed eponymous album from Marc Facchini.

No skipping songs, no rewind or fast forward – this is a click-free zone. One simple keystroke or touch of the mouse and the deliciously floaty aurals literally scratch to stop, with a discordant needle-being-dragged-across-vinyl sound that makes one feel vaguely ashamed for fidgeting.  

Christian Langballe, CD and partner at Hello Great Works, elaborates: "We don’t believe that technology has a will of its own. It's we humans who decide what impact technology should have on our lives. We therefore wanted to investigate how we could use a website to create an internet-based experience based on the values of calmness and immersion. It’s a lot to ask of online behaviour, but that’s what makes it interesting. If users can’t stand the site, can’t listen to the music and are quitting – then maybe we’re proven a point."