SEXTET
EXPLORATION
Kinetic Music Instrument-Reactive Sculpture
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.
Without music, the 2D motion of each ticker is extremely chaotic, but it all makes sense once a 3rd dimension is added — sound.
When visitors put on the headphones, they see each instrument in Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” come to life in a dancing, kinentic dance.
I see applications of this in performance, teaching music and accessible interactions with audio for the visually impaired. See video for a demo of a laser-cut MDF prototype.
Process