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Sextet

Kinetic Music Instrument-Reactive Sculpture

Kinetic sculptureRoboticsMusicInstallationRCA

How might we design with chaos being required for the final result? This was a brief given to me as part of my MA Design Products at the Royal College of Art.

I manually interpreted the playing of 7 instruments in a loose Jazz Fusion song, and visualised them as kinetic tickers in 3D space — Synth Bass, Electric Bass, Drums, Keys, Synth, Guitar and Winds.

Sextet is a kinetic sculpture that reacts to the individual instruments in a song, capturing their rhythm and turning it into movement. The vision: to see these in schools and concerts — helping aurally-impaired kids explore rhythm in a new way, and feel live music like never before.

Rainbow-gradient wedge sculpture with red, green, purple and blue tickers blurred mid-swing against blackSide view of laser-cut MDF wedge prototype with three wooden tickers and cables exiting one endClose-up of laser-etched SYNTH BASS, BASS, DRUMS, KEYS labels on an MDF panelWooden tickers motion-blurred mid-swing in the laser-cut MDF prototypePerson in headphones testing the SEXTET prototype on a studio desk while the maker watches
Jazz drum comping exercise sheet with two staves of triplet-based notationWooden pyramid metronome with its pendulum motion-blurred mid-swingSilhouetted figures under spotlight beams cutting through haze in a dark installationHand on an AKAI MPK Mini MIDI keyboard in front of a MacBook running Logic Pro at nightLogic Pro session with instrument stems colour-coded red, orange, green, blue and purpleLogic Pro piano roll showing dense green MIDI notes with velocity valuesRow of six blue micro servos mounted inside the open laser-cut MDF trayMicro servos wired to a PWM driver board and Arduino Uno inside the MDF enclosureHand hot-gluing blue micro servos onto a laser-cut MDF rail at a cluttered workbenchAudio jack and USB cable plugged into a cut-out port in the MDF enclosureLogic Pro External Instrument window routing MIDI to 'IAC Driver To Arduino' on channel 1Square crop: rainbow wedge sculpture with colourful tickers blurred in motion against blackSquare side view of the MDF wedge prototype with three tickers and trailing cables
Seven tickers in the MDF base above engraved labels Synth Bass, Bass, Drums, Keys, Synth, Guitar, WindsSquare macro of engraved SYNTH BASS, BASS, DRUMS, KEYS labels on the MDF wedgeMaker presents the SEXTET prototype on a yellow desk to a visitor in a busy design studioTwo visitors lean in close over the SEXTET prototype beneath pinned project boards
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