Musical Steps
Wondering document
By: Espen Skorve, Bjørnar Lassen, Karsten Jansen, Ingunn Rønningen

Problem domain

Making an exhibition in The Norwegian Children's Museum, which is contributing to children's exploratory and learning abilities.

We understand The Norwegian Children’s Museum as an initiative rooted in the visions of physicist Frank Oppenheimer, who conceived the San Francisco Exploratorium. As opposed to the “don’t-touch” nature of more conventional museum exhibitions, the Exploratorium is based on the idea of creating learning experiences through interaction.

“The Exploratorium's mission is to create a culture of learning through innovative environments, programs, and tools that help people nurture their curiosity about the world around them”  (http://www.exploratorium.edu/about/fact_sheet.html).

In addition to the aspect of learning through exploring, the Norwegian initiative emphasizes the boundary crossing potential of the basic concept through creating environments for interactions across the boundaries of language, culture and other segregating factors.

Assumptions

We interpret our mission to be the design, creation and evaluation of a prototype that might be developed into an actual installation in The Norwegian Children's Museum, according to our understanding described above.

Our concept is based on the assumptions described below:

Children enjoy moving and dancing.
Children enjoy music.
Children enjoy - and learn through - experiencing how their actions have an impact on the world around them.
Children want to engage in collaborative activites and share their findings with others. Learning through exploration can be considered a collaborative activity that children want to take part in.
The children are inspired by learning through play opposed to learning something predefined. The growing sense of mastery drives them to explore the installation as a whole.
Children enjoy expressing themselves through active engagement and motion - either through play, exploration, spontaneous dancing, or manipulation.
When children get excited, they simply can't keep still and follow instructions. They want to explore instead. Discovering connections, the children get even more excited.
All humans, including children,   make connections between colors and perceived emotions.
Dance, gestures, music, and colors are not restricted by language, cross-cultural barriers, intellectual differences, and barriers caused by physical and sensory disabilities.

Conseptual model

In this installation kids will first enter a room with a number of sensors; easily identified hotspots or objects to manipulate. By touching, moving, picking up, throwing, pushing, pulling, dancing, giving the sensor a big hug, waving the arms frantically in mid-air or otherwise interacting depending on the type of sensor, sound will be played.  All of the sensors will have the ability to add a sound or sequence of sounds that collaborates with the other sensors. Hence, even if all sensors are trigged, the result will not be noise, but something that will still sound suitable together. In addition to the audio output, there will be visual output. This visual output will be a color, and when several sensors are triggered, it will provide an intriguing specter of color. 

For an additional challenge, the children can enter another room, where the sensors are either invisible or otherwise camouflaged. The operation of the “game” is now known, and the idea is to discover where the functional sensors are.

Learning to use this installation will be based on exploring it. There is no set objective to achieve, the goal is the experimenting and exploration itself. Once the kids figure out how to use the sensors, or observe other kids figuring it out, the race is on to find other sensors with cool sounds.

Our usergroup is not set in stone, basically, anyone who can move around in one way or the other, can enjoy the intallation.

Metephor

The concept of dance is associated to the combination of music and movements for adults and children alike, and is therefore an apt metaphor for our interface. By simply moving around in the installation, the children will trigger a variety of different musical sounds. 

Claims /goal

Combining the children's amusement in moving and dancing in this installation, will give the kids the chance to create something unique, equals a ton of fun!
Being participants in a series of collaborative events will give children a feeling of social identity, and bridge any cultural gaps.
Presenting the children's exploration multimodally will amplify the excitement factor, and it will make the learning process more accessible for participants with sensory handicaps.

Music is an international and boundary crossing form of expression. Language barriers and cultural differences should be no hindrance for cooperation and communication through the Musical Steps installation, as this happens through movement rather than through speech.

We want the children to enjoy themselves, and at the same time learn something and feel mastery. We want them to experience how they can influence and shape their surroundings, and how working together will create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.