You're The Conductor |
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Although it is a real recording of the Boston Pops that you are hearing and seeing (not synthesized MIDI music), you can still control even their tempo while they are playing, like a real conductor - and without the pitch changing. This is called time-stretching. Compare this to a record player where the music changes its pitch as you change the speed. Time-stretching is achieved by applying a Fourier transformation to the audio signal, and retransforming it so that its musical information ("sound") stays the same, but its duration is changed. | |
You're The Conductor is the latest in a series of interactive music exhibits designed by members of the group. The Virtual Conductor was an earlier conducting exhibit, but You're The Conductor was built entirely from scratch, designed especially for children, with new baton technology, new gesture recognition engine, and featuring a new, continuous audio time-stretching algorithm that even allows you to pause the orchestra entirely. |
You're The Conductor is a permanent exhibit in the Children's Museum in Boston. It is part of the Making America's Music special exhibition that opened on June 27, 2003. Following a year in Boston, You're The Conductor will travel around the world as part of this exhibition for five years before returning to Boston. |
You're The Conductor was designed and implemented as a
collaboration between Stanford University, Immersion Music, and ETH Zurich.
Prof. Jan Borchers (Stanford University, now ETH Zurich, actibits) and PhD students Eric Lee and
Ron Yeh from Stanford developed the audio and video rendering software and
time-stretching technology. Teresa Marrin Nakra, founder and Artistic Director
of Immersion Music designed and
built the infrared baton system and gesture recognition software.
We would like to thank National Instruments and Hamamatsu for supporting this project.
June 25, 2003
Children's Museum provides a music intro: New exhibit gives kids the chance to conduct the Boston
Pops
Town Online (Herald Media Boston), Ed Symkus
June 27, 2003
Children's
Museum, BSO create $2 million music exhibit
The Boston Globe, Geoff
Edgers
''Parents are starving; they really want their kids exposed to
real music''
Children's
Museum & Boston Symphony Orchestra - Making America's Music
BostonUSA
''The exhibits celebrate
the joy and diversity of American music''
June 28, 2003
In
Tune: Boston Symphony reaches out to children
The Patriot Ledger, Jody
Feinberg
''The section where you conduct the Pops is really
amazing''
Unfortunately, the MIT Media Lab was incorrectly identified
as the creator of the "You're The Conductor" exhibit.
Striking a
chord with kids
The Boston
Globe, Ashlea Deahl
''Children become conductors as they stand
before a wide-screen video of the Boston Pops playing 'Stars and Stripes
Forever!'''
For more information, contact
Jan Borchers | Teresa Marrin Nakra | ||
Department of Computer Science ETH Zurich <borchers(at)cs.rwth-aachen.de> |
Founder, Artistic Director Immersion Music, Inc. <teresa(at)immersionmusic.org> |