Björk's Kórsafn in Rangsit: how Ploy learns how Microsoft AI watched the sky to remix a choir archive in a New York hotel, and finds the highest note before her AI piano lessons

Ploy is eleven and lives in Rangsit, in a house with a flat roof where her family dries laundry and watches thunderstorms roll in during the rainy season. She loves the sky so much that she keeps a cloud diary, sketching shapes and noting colours. When her art teacher mentioned a music project that turned the sky into song, Ploy could hardly wait to learn more.

The project was Kórsafn, created by the Icelandic singer and composer Björk together with Microsoft. It launched in January 2020 in the lobby of Sister City, a hotel on the Lower East Side of New York. The name means choral archive in Icelandic, which describes the source of its music.

For years Björk had collected recordings of her songs arranged for choir, many sung by the Hamrahlíð Choir from Reykjavík. Kórsafn used those human recordings as raw material. Instead of playing them in fixed order, a system combined fragments into music that keeps changing throughout the day.

The change came from the sky. A camera on the hotel roof watched the weather, the light and things that passed overhead, such as clouds, aeroplanes and birds. Microsoft's AI technology analysed what the camera saw and used that information to decide which choral elements to bring forward and how to blend them.

So a bright morning might sound different from a stormy evening, and a flock of birds might trigger a new layer of voices. Guests and passers-by in the lobby heard a soundtrack that responded to the world outside, so no two moments were quite the same.

Ploy found the idea beautiful because it made the weather a kind of conductor. She also noticed that the AI was not writing melodies by itself. The singing came from real people, the arrangements came from Björk, and the AI acted more like a careful mixer reacting to the sky.

Many people in the music industry are now debating how AI should be used. Some projects use it to imitate famous voices or generate whole songs, raising worries about copying. Kórsafn offers a different picture: AI as a partner that helps human-made music respond to the environment.

Björk has long explored technology in her work. Her 2011 project Biophilia was released partly as a set of interactive apps, and she has often combined natural sounds with electronic tools. Ploy liked that the artist treated technology as a creative playground rather than something to fear.

The hotel setting mattered too. Most hotel lobbies play the same background playlist all day, but Kórsafn made the lobby itself feel alive, with music that drifted as daylight faded. Ploy thought that was a gentle way to show what this technology can do: not shouting for attention, but quietly helping people notice the sky above a busy city.

Ploy's own music journey started this year with TIGA ALPHA, an online piano learning app on her father's tablet. Its AI piano teacher listens to her practice, shows mistakes in colour and slows the music when needed. She jokes that it is her rooftop camera, watching her fingers instead of the clouds.

Ploy reads ahead to find the highest note, then she lifts her eyes to the ceiling and pictures it as a bird. The image calms her, because the bird is waiting up there for her hand to arrive. Since adopting the habit, she has stopped tensing up as melodies climb.

Weather as a conductor

In the app's beginner piano course she is learning brief pieces named after nature, such as rain and wind, and she adds a cloud sketch to her diary after each practice. Some days she invents a little tune to match the sky, playing softer when the clouds are thin and heavier when a storm gathers.

Her school music lessons include singing with a classroom choir, and Ploy told her classmates about the Icelandic choir whose recordings feed Kórsafn. The teacher played a few clips, and the class tried singing long, gentle notes while watching the clouds through the window.

Ploy's father worries she spends too much time staring at the sky, but he admits her practice has become steady. She wants to learn piano so that one day she can create her own weather music, maybe with recordings of Rangsit storms.

Every afternoon, after school and before the rain, Ploy climbs to the roof, writes in her cloud diary and then heads downstairs for her AI piano lessons, hoping to play piano and play music that changes with the sky.

Frequently asked questions

Q: What is Kórsafn? A: Kórsafn is a generative music project by Icelandic artist Björk with Microsoft, launched in 2020 in the lobby of the Sister City hotel in New York. AI linked to a rooftop camera responded to the sky, weather and passing birds by rearranging Björk's archive of choral recordings.

Q: Why is Kórsafn an AI example? A: It shows AI used as a creative partner that reacts to the environment, rather than as a tool that writes songs from scratch. The source music came from human singers and Björk's arrangements, while the AI decided how to combine them in real time.

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