Do you remember Google’s Blob Opera? No? Well, aren’t you in for a treat? Way back in 2020, the festive Blobs took the stage just in time for the Christmas holiday. The amorphous quartet is a fun experiment featured in Google Arts & Culture that allows users to move the Blobs around to create varying operatic pitches. For those that may not be so musically inclined, you can select from a list of traditional holiday tunes and the Blobs will serenade you directly from the browser. You can even change the setting for the Blob Opera with stages that include New York, Cape Town, Paris, and more. Each location offers up a handful of music selections from the local area.
The Blobs are most certainly cute and very fun to play with and talk about hours of entertainment for the kiddos. Give them some headphones and send them on their way. As silly and entertaining as the Blobs may be, an aspiring artist could actually make some very cool compositions with the quartet if one were to take the time to do so. As a matter of fact, you can find countless YouTube videos in which musical geniuses have taken the time to create some really awesome content using the Blob Opera. My personal favorite has to be this enthralling arrangement of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” from YouTuber @giri.
I mean, seriously. It’s unreal. For the past couple of years, the Blob Opera has been making its rounds across the globe and even made an appearance at the 2021 Google I/O developer conference. This year, the Blobs are back with an all-new arcade-style game called Blob Beats. Along for the ride, Google Arts and Culture has launched a second rhythm game titled Beethoven Beats in collaboration with the classical music label Deutsche Grammophon.
Blob Beats
The Blobs are back with an all-new Guitar Hero-style arcade game. In this Google Arts & Culture machine learning experiment, you can challenge yourself to keep up with the beat of five different classical opera songs. Along the way, you’ll be presented with some interesting facts about the musical pieces and their composers. Time the Blobs just right by using the S, D, F, and G keys on your keyboard and try to crush some high scores. If you’re like me, you may want to start on the easy level. Despite being a drummer, I’m not great at these types of games.
Beethoven Beats
Joining the Blobs this year, Google Arts & Culture has teamed up with the classical music label Deutsche Grammophon to bring us Beethoven Beats. This experiment is very cool. You simply launch the web page and start tapping the button to create a 4-second-long beat. Once you’ve created your beat, the game will match your rhythm with a composition from Ludwig van Beethoven. From there, you’ll be serenaded with an excerpt from that particular piece. Click on the “explore” option and you’ll get the full version of Mr. Beethoven’s arrangement.
Blob Beats and Beethoven Beats are the latest examples of what the web can do and they build on the ever-growing library of web-based games and experiments found on Google Arts & Culture. While some of these games may seem a bit silly, they highlight the capabilities of the web-based world in which we live while providing an educational and entertaining look at the world around us. Very cool stuff, if you ask me. You can find these new additions and all of the Google Arts & Culture games and web experiments at the link below.