We created two zones in this exhibition about NZ music for the Auckland War Memorial Museum, an Interactive 70's pub band and a projection mapped set of the 50's TV show C'mon, visited by over 200,000 people.
“Volume has been one of our most popular exhibitions with visitors. The seven-month exhibition has been a chance to forge new partnerships in innovation, technology and entertainment to provide cutting-edge experiences for our visitors and tell the stories of New Zealand’s rich musical past and present.” Museum Director Dr David Gaimster
Winner: Exhibition Media Award for its innovative blend of culture and technology at the international 2017 GLAMi Awards, Cleveland, Ohio.
Finalist: Exhibition Excellence at the ServiceIQ 2017 New Zealand Museum Awards.
By combining 1970’s instruments with interactive technology we sent users back to a stage in a pub band in the 1970’s where they performed the hit song 'Rain' from kiwi rock legends Dragon in front of a wayward crowd of dancing pub goers.
Authenticity was key. Visitors got to pick up a real bass, electric guitar or sit behind a drum kit or vintage synth. They were shown what to play by watching lights on the instruments. The performance of the users was compared with a ‘perfect’ performance, providing a score. For the guitar and bass we tapped into LED lights in the necks of Fretlight guitars allowing us to light up the frets. For the keys we hacked into an existing 'light up' keyboard which was remounted into the case of a 70's synth. The drums experience was created using Roland Vdrum sensors mounted onto a real drum kit with silent skins. We used led lights inside the drums, and a focused spotlight for the cymbal.
A video projection of a dancing pub crowd covered the adjacent wall, making it feel like you were playing in front of a real audience. Instructions and scoring were displayed in a monitor mounted inside a box built to look like a foldback speaker from the time.
To showcase the 50's TV show C'Mon we created a portion of the set from the live TV show, then filmed a re creation of the show, complete with dancers, musicians and a TV crew. We reverse engineered the performance of 2 songs from the show, recreating the performance of the original dancers and musicians as closely as possible. This was projection mapped onto our set which was a cutaway version of the real set, recreating a portion of the ramp from the original show. In the opposite corner we created a 50's lounge with an old TV playing the actual show ‘C’Mon’.
It felt like you were there in the studio as the songs were being performed, but were also able to see the transmitted show in a real 50’s TV in a real 50’s lounge.
Made by
Jon Baxter, Armagan Ballantyne, Puck Murphy, Olivier Jean, Jenna Gavin, Siobhan Cade, John Oz, Peter Hobbs, Moss Patterson, Fiona Nicholls, Brant Fraser, Kylie Cooke, Hannah Walker, Lani Feltham
Software
TouchDesigner, Ableton Live, Madmapper, Flame
Hardware
Arduino, PC, Fretlight Guitars, Casio Keyboard, Roland VDrums