It can be challenging to keep 19 balls in the air, but not when you can control them with your iPhone.
The Floating Orchestra, conceptualised by London-based Poietic Studio, is something of an unconventional musical instrument where the user (player) is a “supernatural conductor”.
There are 19 levitating balls in the orchestra and each ball becomes an orchestral instrument that increases in volume as it physically rises. The height of the balls is determined by an iPhone application that allows users to adjust the sounds, height and angle of the raising balls. In the future editions of the project Poietic hope to see the balls controlled by mere gestures.
Mixing digital technology with the physical world, this project appeals to a diverse audience. Floating Orchestra uses a lightuino microcontroller, linked to a max msp application. This allows for a variation in the power transmitted to each of the 19 balls. The iPhone app, in turn, feeds data to the controller via wifi.
For Poietic this project is a demonstration of the “amazing gravity-defying properties that this kind of levitation is capable of”.
