The main task of this project was to create a form of business card for the Museum of Performing Arts in Stockholm, Sweden. The purpose of the business card is to provide potential visitors with a remote experience of the museum as a way to present what the museum has to offer and to hopefully encourage people to visit.
Our idea for what experience could be conveyed through this business card started when we visited the museum ourselves. There are several instruments in the museum that are available for visitors to try out themselves and among these was one large, beautiful harp. Since playing a harp is something many people likely do not get the opportunity to do very often, we found this to be a potentially attractive experience and chose this as the focus of our project. We created a virtual harp, which is a simplified version of a real-life harp, that a user can play directly on their mobile phone.
The application was designed to be simple to use so that as many people as possible can enjoy it. To produce beautiful sounds, users do not need any prior musical knowledge and this is consistent with the real harps at the museum where the strings are tuned in a way that plucking them will practically always result in harmonic tones. A benefit of our virtual harp is that it may be easier to play for people who might have difficulties plucking real strings, as our application only requires tapping the screen and moving the phone.
This application was made with MobMuPlat and PureData.
Demo link: https://youtu.be/A4AoTOQxWsw