Exhibitions, Installations, New Media Design, Portfolio
Masters of Arts 2010 – City of Senses 12.5.-13.6.2010
22 Apr 2010 by Matti Luhtala · Leave a Comment
Masters of Arts 2010 takes place near Senaatintori. Once a year arranged the Masters of Arts exhibition is a celebration as well as a tour de force of the new Masters. Masters of Arts is the collective effort of the graduating generation to make visible the richness of ideas and the creative energy of the whole Aalto University School of Art and Design. Production part of my thesis, Music of the Spheres (MOTS) will be exhibited as well. After the MOA 2010 the installation is placed permanently to Kindergarten Museum Helsinki.
Music of the Spheres
Music of the Spheres allows multiple users of all ages to play and interact simultaneously. The interactive environment consists of a tabletop projection screen and external speakers that present dynamic multimedia when producing music and sounds. Users can interact with the system using different geometric shaped blocks as tangible interfaces. The written part reflects the background research, prototyping and realization outcomes to existing interaction design, prototyping and embodied design paradigms.
User testing arranged at the Kindergarten Museum Helsinki
Resulting interaction design
The interaction metaphor of the MOTS is closely related to the act of gardening and growing flowers. Using the tangible objects users are able to create kaleidoscopic geometrically shaped flowers and to explore the poly-rhythmic sound patterns. You may look at the ending result of the interaction from below video. In the video are represented three larger flower objects, seeds and and one smaller note object. The larger flower objects are individual flowers that are mapped to the geometric shaped tangible objects. When the table is on idle state the flowers are in their nests. When a block is grasped and put on the table, a corresponding flower travels under the tangible block. When the user moves the block the flower follows it with a spring effect. As soon as two or more of the blocks are on the table flower visuals and sounds can be produced. By facing the tangible objects together on the screen users can create smaller flowers that produce sounds.
Screen capture of the MOTS
Final sound design version
As a source of inspiration for designing the sounds I used bell-sounding tones from the Brain Eno’s Bloom software. After the careful analytic listening I was able to create similar sounding clear and shiny characteristics that while playing together make pleasant and calming effect. The main idea of the created sound qualities is that the user can concentrate listening on them or participate in collaborative composition process. The sound samples include 22 individual samples. The samples of the MOTS are 22 diatonic notes progressing from C1 to C4. Please listen the note progressions clicking player below.
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