d’Art Souterrain (French for Underground Art) does a new take on the public space playable piano keyboard.
This installation is located in one of the under ground pedestrian tunnel of Place Ville Marie in Montreal. Their objective was to take a create a space where people could interact in what is otherwise an area only used by people to transition from one place to another.
People walking through the tunnel play the piano by touching one of the glass panels to play the note represented. Since the glass panels are spread throughout the tunnel, they hope that people will act in a group to make music.
Notes De Passage from notes depassage on Vimeo.
One of it’s creators Jacob Dufossé, came by the SpikenzieLabs shop to pick-up some required supplies. The way that he described how it works is like this; a capacitance touch sensor is located under the glass. The sensor connects to a wire that goes straight back into the area behind the glass where there is an Arduino and a sound shield. When the sensor is triggered the audio from the sound shield goes into a standard audio mixer and is then amplified and played on speakers located in the tunnel.