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 combining sensitive input devices and computer graphics imagery into an integrated musical and visual interface, up to fourteen maximum simultaneous players are able to participate in a collaborative approach to musical improvisation. I demonstrate that this interactive audio and video installation embraces both the novice and musically trained participants by taking advantage of their intuitive abilities and social interaction skills
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.

Due to the great developments in technology, many things have been changed. New media brings many different forms of new art. Due to this, more and more virtual worlds will occupy our life. However, people won’t only want new things, but also yearn for old things. So even in the virtual world, people want to be able to touch things physically as they used to do. To satisfy those people, I came up with this idea that adding physical experience to the virtual world. This will give an interactive experience that will make a harmony of digital and analog world to the users. By adding this interactive experience to my project, I can get more attraction and interest from the people.

Since a childhood, I have had a diverse background. I love music, both playing and listening. I have been loved drawing and painting since I started to learn those. Even though, I quit studying electron and electronic science, I loved making electronic things. Like this, I am very open to various areas, and I don't want to give up any of them. For me, there is no distinction among those music, art and technology. In my opinion, those have to be enjoyed by people without any restriction. This is the personal reason that why I chose my thesis to fusion art. (I want to call my project like this, because that is a combination of music, art and technology all together at the same time.) I can't give up any of those, and there should be no boundaries among all art forms. I want to narrow the gap between art, technology and music. I want to make a seamless art, so that everything can be harmonized. I agree that the deepest and most meaningful experiences are those that somehow combine and synthesize everything that is part of being alive, exclusive of nothing.

In addition to that, since I was very young, I always wanted to be a teacher. I really want to help people to enjoy learning. I don’t want people think learning as very hard and not enjoyable thing. Especially for children, I think we have to give them as many as chances that they can enjoy learning. To accomplish this goal, I come up with my thesis which is an enjoyable music education tool for children. I want to children just enjoy music as itself without any fear of hard notes or compositions. I want them naturally enjoy sounds and learn music.
My project is aural, visual and tactile art. It is a strong expression of my artistic freedom and passion for education.

Research on Music Teaching and Learning During Elementary School Years
Diane C. Persellin
Trinity University

Music is its own discipline and need not to be justified to strengthen other skills or understandings. The learning of music, however, may also have a broader effect, one beyond the aesthetic merit of music.
The effect of music instruction on spatial skills. Music instruction can supply intellectual, emotional, and physical components critical to children’s development. During the last ten years, investigators have suggested that music instruction may have an effect on spatial skills or the ability to visualize an object from different perspectives. Hetland (2000), in a meta-analysis, examined 15 studies relating music instruction and spatial skills. These studies were conducted by a variety of research teams using various treatments. Hetland found that active instruction in music appears to have a small but significant effect on spatial skills for preschool and elementary-aged children lasting as long as instruction continues up to two years. Effects of music training, however, did not persist for long after music instruction ceased. The testing instruments used in these assessments are imperfect; low reliability of the testing measures used in many of these studies continues to be a concern. More research in this area is needed.
The effect of piano instruction on self-esteem. A McGill University study (Costa-Giomi, 1999) found that children who had taken three years of piano instruction had significantly higher self-esteem than children who were not enrolled in piano lessons. These results were not related to family income, sex, family structure, or parental employment. In addition to piano lessons, students in this study owned a new piano, played in recitals, and received individual attention from a caring teacher. While these elements could also have had an impact on the improvement in self-esteem, the overall effect of piano instruction could not be disputed.
Conclusion. This is an exciting time to explore research on musical development and music instruction of children. Interest in how children learn and value music has increased dramatically in parents, educators, and the music industry in the past twenty years. As investigators continue to conduct new studies and to replicate current studies, a strong foundation of musical understanding will be developed which will strengthen music education for generations to come.



Technology and Creative Expression
Tod Machover
October, 1995

The idea of hyperinstruments was to develop computer systems that could monitor and eventually "understand" every nuance of musical performance, so that the musician's interpretation and feeling could lead to an enhanced and expanded performance. My idea was always to try to capture the most complete and integrated sense of the musician's meaning and intention, rather than to collect a set of unrelated "parameters" from performance which could then be "mapped" to independent features of a synthesizer or automated composition system. I always want the musician to imagine a musical result in its totality, to use highly developed musical skills and talents, and then to have the machine do the work to translate this into a desired and predictable result.
So I think that we must strive now for a music which can stand on its own against the other media - emphasizing its ability to create mysteriously deep emotional and mental experiences, encouraging listeners to "fill in the blanks" - while combining a seriousness of purpose and depth of content with a colloquial and non-elitist expression.
Our interactive technology should encourage this goal, by creating situations which invite people to participate in significant ways through eliminating every unnecessary barrier, while making sure that the experience offered enhances and expands life experience instead of being a mindless drug.
So, the situation is in fact paradoxical. We DO have to find increasing ways to make music a part of everyday life, by building "instruments" of expression into our everyday environment, into furniture, clothing, toys, walls, everything - but must do this so that our lives become richer, more REAL, and not synthetically plastic and "virtual."



Existing Projects

T o y S y m p h o n y
Tod Machover

M A T R I X
Multipurpose Array of Tactile Rods for Interactive eXpression
Dan Overholt

MY PAST PROJECTS

Virtual flower
http://itp.nyu.edu/~csl283/itp/show/winter05/

Wonder painter
http://changsoo.com/itp/jitter/final/

Ludic
http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/~ah1121/ludic/

Children and also people who want to create music, but they don't need to have any technique.

There can be many performers at the same time. Each performers can create their own music composition by touching the seven balls or pressing the touch pad which represent a scale. Those two instruments have different sounds and performers can make a small orchestra while they are playing the instruments.

‘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. These are sophisticated hyperinstruments, designed for children and non-professional musicians. I will create new kind of instruments that will be played by touching light balls, touching a pad and pressing the touch pad. While performers are playing, a computer which will be connected to them by using the Bluetooth is also generating sounds. Both of these different instruments will have sensors in themselves, so they are sending data to the Jitter. Jitter will create different effects on the 3 dimensional animation that will be playing on a screen. Such interfaces are proving to be useful for children and students, giving direct tactile control over complex sound systems, but will also be sophisticated enough for use by sophisticated musicians and music-lovers.

I have two versions for this installation. First, for the children I will have an animation which is the scene of under the sea. Also, there is a girl who is singing a scale. Through this animation, I want children to be attracted by the visual effects. Second version is for general use. This installation can be not just for children’s music education but also for general people. For these people, I will have another animation and sound which is very oriental and calm. This version can be installed in public or houses. People can just enjoy see the beautiful visuals. For this version, I will have completely different kind of sound from the first one which will be also very clam and oriental. I want to express the beauty of simplicity which is the basic beauty of Korean art. People will have peaceful mind through this animation and sound.