Hays + Ryan Holladay

The title of the series comes from a memory effect that psychologists refer to as priming, in which exposure to one stimulus influences response to a later stimulus. For example, a person who sees the word "yellow" will be slightly faster at recognizing the word "banana".

With more than 700 Dolby® employees and their invited guests moving through the lobby on a daily basis, the artists perceived an interesting opportunity for a work that changes depending on when it’s being viewed. By weaving together similar visual and auditory motifs through all four parts of the Prime series, the artists hope visitors may subconsciously anticipate, for instance, the next phrase in a now-familiar melody or may recognize specific color arrangements.

Prime isn’t the Holladay brothers’ first multichannel, multisensory work. In recent years, the Holladay brothers have developed a reputation for their pioneering work in location-aware compositions — music created and mapped to a particular space — including a recent example in Dolby’s new neighborhood.

With this latest installation, the Holladay brothers have brought their aesthetic indoors and into the mind of each individual viewer. The piece uses artistry and technology in equal parts, relying on the organic sound of the human voice positioned precisely in space using our most advanced sound format to date, Dolby Atmos®, to play with the audience’s perception of sound, picture, and memory. In that way, Prime is an introduction to, and a demonstration of, the kind of work that we do at Dolby.