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One of my favorites was done by the San Jose Children's Museum in an
NSF funded exhibit they did on rhythm. It was a zoetrope of a
running horse that had little mechanical flags users could raise or
lower. When a flag was up it would make a click as it went by a
sensor. There was one flag for each image in the zoetrope. Raise the
flags on the images where the horse's hooves touched the ground and
you would hear the horse run when the zoetrope was spun.
They also came up with a brilliant interface for an electronic drum
machine. It was a whole wall of house light switches with the
horizontal rows being the different instruments and the vertical
columns being the beat. A row of lights above would flash as the
beat moved from left to right. Wherever a switch was in the on
position it would play that instrument on that beat. It was very cool
because you could see the pattern you made.
I played with it and got inspired to take it a step further, building
my Drum Machine that is "D" in my traveling exhibit "Contraptions A to
Z". It's a mechanical version with real drums, cymbals, etc. The
drumsticks pass in front. Users raise and lower the mechanical
switches that trip the drumsticks as they go by. Before I built it I
told San Jose that I was thinking about doing the mechanical version
and asked them if they had any advice. Tom Nielson said "that's
great!' and relayed that they had had to change all the switches from
a normal toggle switch to the Decora style switch to facilitate the
staff turning the switches off, because visitors tended to leave
everything on (staff could just run their hand down the line as they
walked past). I took his encouragement and his advice and built into
my mechanical version a single reset lever that knocked all the
switches to the off position, giving the user a fresh start for making
their own new rhythm pattern.
What's great about both of these drum machines is that they are always
in rhythm, and therefore pleasant to listen to. One of the worst
things to do in an exhibit is to put out drums for users to bang on.
Unless you clue them in by having a beat track going, they will almost
never be in rhythm. Along these lines, a funny story was that the
guy who ran the drum shop where I bought all my drums for the machine
told me he got into the business because he loved drums, but that he
got a headache most days because their was nothing musical about
people "trying out" drums. It was WHAMWHAMWHAM as hard as they
could. He, museum visitors and museum staff all love the drum
machine.
Contraptions A to Z is still going strong, available for rent. I am
also willing to build a new drum machine if someone wants one for
permanent display.
Clifford Wagner
Clifford Wagner Science Interactives Inc.
www.scienceinteractives.com
On Oct 15, 2009, at 11:40 AM, David Torgersen wrote:
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Two of my favorites are 'Keep the Beat', and 'Find the Groove' at the
> Exploratorium. Both are good explorations of rhythm, and the feel of
> the beat.
> --
>
> David Torgersen
> Audio / Sound Developer
> Exploratorium
> 415-674-2813
> http://www.exploratorium.edu/listen/
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Maria Mortati <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
>> Centers
>> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
>> institutions.
>> *****************************************************************************
>>
>> Hi all,
>> Any cool music exhibits you know of?
>>
>> Please send them my way.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Maria Mortati
>>
>>
>> --
>> curator: http://www.sfmobilemuseum.org/
>> blog: http://museums-now.blogspot.com/
>> work: http://www.gyroscopeinc.com
>> site: http://mortati.com
>>
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