Music for the Masses

Daily Tous les Jours, a Canadian interaction design group, creates wonderful multi-disciplinary media projects in public spaces. According to the designers, the idea is to harness mass participation to create one-of-a-kind musical events. At the same time, they also totally change the character of public spaces, getting people to have fun.

The group just created 21 Balancoires, a “giant collective instrument” for Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles festival (see video above). For the piece,people swing to activate the music. They write: “When in motion, each swing in the series triggers different notes and, when used all together, the swings compose a musical piece in which certain melodies emerge only through cooperation.”

Daily Tout les Jours worked with Luc-Alain Giraldeau, an animal behavior professor from the Université du Québec à Montréal’s Science Faculty, to explore how cooperation really works and how to make it happen. Their research found that “cooperation…