F . U . S . I . O . N     B . A . N . D

Project Description

You've done it at least once: Played air guitar to your favorite song -- alone, in a crowd, or in your car. Music connects us in some way to a thought, an idea, or a memory. But actually learning how to play an instrument or compose an original tune is hard. However, imagine if you were 10 years old and you could play a musical instrument, without spending years in music lessons.

By creating a whole set of new instruments, I am trying to turned to technology to design special musical instruments that eliminate years of scales and struggles with fingering. The new instruments are for children to perform and compose music, create and compose music. Also, a group of people can play the instruments together. Kids can learn to work together to compose a sound. Many great ideas can come through this group collaboration.

These new type of instruments can be intuitive. They are easy to learn for children, but also deep enough and rich enough for professional performers to try to figure out what is exactly going on by playing with the new instruments.Through these instruments, l can give children who might not have access to music a chance to explore their creative side. It by no means replaces traditional music education, but serves as a supplementary tool. This is a world where music and technology merge, a world often without clefs, quarter-notes and other conventions of music notation, a world accessible to young novices and accomplished musicians. With the new instruments, I am going to create an installation 'Fusion Band'.

‘Fusion Band’ is an audio and video installation which is a combination of sensing experiences which are seeing, touching and hearing. There are three different instruments which are not existing ones. I will create new kind of instruments that will be played by sweeping the strings, blowing a pipe and hitting a gong. They will have their own sounds. While they are playing, a computer which will be connected to them is also generating sounds at the same time. Each of these three different instruments will have sensors in themselves, so they are sending data to the Jitter. Jitter will create different effects on the movie that will be playing on a screen.

I was inspired by Korean traditional instruments like ‘gayageum’ ,‘gong’ and 'danso' (a short bamboo flute) which are very physical.

I want to add this physical aspect to the digital device(Jitter). Also, the instruments will have two different kinds of sound. One kind will be their own sounds from the instruments and the other will be sounds of the performers' voices which will be generated by a computer. These very different styles of sounds will make a harmony. Performers can play the three instruments at the same time, and they can play in concert. Through these, I expect to accomplish the seamless music and art. My final goal for working with children is to bring them the delight of sound itself; the delight of gesture and physical engagement with music-making and performing in a group.