What happens when you develop a musical interaction sculpture together with large groups of disabled children? Well, you get a music instrument that looks like nothing on earth. And you also win the Mariano Gago Ecsite Award for best European museum installation in 2016.
With Multisensory Music the visitors create music by touching the sculpture and each other. The shape is weird and edgy to make it challenging to reach to contact surfaces. The large number of possible combinations of touching makes for endless exploration in music.
The music is expressed not only as sound but also as vibrations though 5 bass shakers inside the sculpture – and it’s visualized as animations that “look like the music sounds” displayed on the rhombic glasses from projections inside the sculpture. Each rhombus representing a musical harmony. Music is experienced with many senses at the same time.
Multi Sensory Music was developed in collaboration with groups of disabled children who performed tests during the whole process. The project is a part of Megamind, a new ambitious science center at Sweden’s Musuem of Science and Technology.
Multisensory Music weight apx 300 kg, it’s 2800 mm from edge to edge and the shape is built by 2 elements only that has ben repeated and twisted in different combinations. The electronics contains of 5 contact surfaces, the connections is detected by a Rasberry Pi, sending data to a MacMini. 2 stereo loudspeakers, 5 bass shakers, 4 regular loudspeakers and a ultra short throw projector.
Concept, design, sounds by Håkan Lidbo
Electronics and programming by Magnus Frenning,
Animations design and programming by Dan Spegel
Sensor programming by Göran Sandström
Woodwork by Romeo Brahaneastu
Painting by Daniela Brahaneastu
Prototyping by David Wätte/Spixa.