Playground - giant crochet ball musical instruments. October 2018.
Playground is an interactive sound art project, where giant textile balls make sound and music as they are played together.
Music is made through play: rolling, bouncing, catching and throwing the brightly coloured balls. These social, playful and interactive objects seek to engage a broad audience in sonic art.
The project poses an artistic and technical challenge in instrument design, endeavouring to craft a portable sound art piece, adaptable for many varied settings. The project is in development, following an iterative methodology of making, remaking, workshopping/exhibiting and critical reflection.
A set of five large and brightly coloured balls have so far been handcrafted, crocheted with super chunky yarn. Each ball contains a BBC micro:bit adapted for e-textiles (electronic textiles), allowing the balls to wirelessly connect and transmit data. The music is composed digitally, coded to respond to the movement of the balls and the current music is soft, as a result of a sensory workshop. The balls seek to be expressive, curious, intuitive and engaging, with a wealth of interesting and dynamic musical material held within and to be explored through participant play.
The project has a broad socio-political intent, investigating an open, experimental and non-virtuosic approach to music making, with round and soft textile-based music technology. The large crochet balls seek to inhabit many and varied settings and spaces through workshops and installations.
Playground has so far been explored at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK), Wilson Stuart School (Birmingham, UK), Dubai Maker Faire (Dubai, UAE), eTextile Spring Break (New York, USA), Midlands4Cities Research Festival (Birmingham, UK) and Interfaces Sound Art Festival (Leicester, UK). This project is currently in progress, visiting schools, galleries, concert halls, public spaces, universities, makerspaces and more. Please get in touch for more information or to arrange a workshop.