As senior business advisor at Palo Alto, California's Interval Research Corporation, Louise Velázquez is planting the seeds of a technological convergence in Hollywood's music industry. The former president of Quincy Jones Productions says she's "infiltrating The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences with musicians and technologists" to sway the future of sound distribution -- while introducing tune-playing pals like Herbie Hancock to wireless modems and other electrogadgets. In May 1996 she took up residence at Interval, the blue-sky research lab started six years ago with a US$100 million investment from Paul Allen. Her job is to draw talent to the enclave of 100 artists, musicians, physicists, journalists, and computer scientists, and turn the stuff they dream up into profitable businesses.
Headliners like Laurie Anderson and Thomas Dolby Robertson collaborate with Interval on projects Velázquez says most companies wouldn't touch. Until the groovy new technologies are ready to leave the labs, Velázquez is sworn to secrecy on them. Having learned from Xerox PARC not to give away valuable research, Interval draws talent partly because it guards its intellectual property so well -- either keeping know-how in house, spinning off a new venture, or selling its technology.
Laurie Anderson's Electronic Theater Company is the latest Interval-funded, Velázquez-counseled venture to move into the limelight. In mid-1998, the company opens Life, a live-video installation, in Krems, Austria, and at the Whitney Museum in New York. Later in 1999, it will debut a Moby Dick opera. "Louise sucks in creative people," says ETC manager Larry Larson. "She fosters both business and experimentation."
Velázquez is philosophical about Interval-style businesses. "Sometimes it's like a collision where two atoms fuse," she says. "But convergence isn't as clean as it sounds."
This article originally appeared in the April issue of Wired magazine.
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