Urban musical instruments at Expo Zaragoza 2008

Performance architect Christopher Janney is what I would call a multidisciplinary guy…who studied architecture at Princeton and jazz in New York. The result: he believes is possible to create a piece of acoustic architecture…what? able to imagine trees with high tech inside…well, not yet there… so in fact the “trees” look more like giant chupa-chups sticks…each of them containing audio speakers, photo sensors and lights that intend to make music touchable & visible in addition to audible…

…making the public to play?…a recipe for disaster?. No worries. It is all under control. People will trigger sounds and melodies that evoke rain forest, classic music, etc out of a laptop hard disk which will be also in charge of keeping a minimum of harmony. Mr. Janney explains it as follows: “it can never sound like monkeys jumping on a piano — we can keep a certain mix of acoustical and environmental sounds working together”….it is called Sonic Forest, and it is currently touring around Europe…and will be at the Expo Zaragoza 2008.