HAPTIC ORGAN
// Completion Date: December, 2017
// Project Location: Fashion Walk Mall, Hong Kong
// Collective Studio: Betty Ng, Katja Lam, Ray Lau and Wingyi So
// Chris Cheung + h0nh1m Team: Chris Cheung, Jason Lam, Man Kit Leun
Haptic Organ - commissioned by Fashion Walk
Text courtesy of Collective Studio:
‘Haptic’ originates from the greek word ‘haptikos’: any sort of information received through touch is haptic, as it appears in this installation, it is based on kinesthetic (expressing force or position) communication, in which the motion of the hand initiates visual displays and sound variations, thus allowing audiences to receive familiar feedbacks to learn how to operate the installation as an instrument.
The creative duo Collective Studio and h0nh1m designed Haptic Organ with an intention to make music tangible, visible, sharable among each other to encourage group interactive moments in celebration of the Christmas season.
It is in the form of a 4-meter tall spiraling instrument with the recognizable elements of the strings; music notes are prompted with the aid of the non-contact haptic interface that detects hands movement in the air, while each of the 20 transparent tubes, like a pipe organ, wrap round the spiral, each encased with a metallic ball which rises up and down, dancing inside the tube through initiated air movement by hand motion; users received the visual feedback of dancing balls and can freely improvise his or her music with the aid of eight sensors giving eight notes across an octave, in addition to four that gives tones of musical instruments like strings, woodwinds, harps and sleigh bells, with volume controllable with ascending and descending movements of the hands over the haptic interfaces.
h0nh1m creates the music as a blessing for joy and peace in the Christmas season. One of the piece is an rearrangement by h0nh1m of ‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’ written by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, it was a work of peace activism, looking towards for peace, equality, the end of wars and discrimination.
