Quantum Melodies
Quantum Melodies is an interactive music installation designed for for isolated individuals aged 75 and above. This interaction aims to empower aging people's creativity by creating music without prior musical knowledge, building social connections through collaborative playing.
Skills
Arduino
Processing
System Design
Dates
25 Fall
AI Interactive
Music Installation
Problem
The Irish Longitudinal Study on Aging finds that older adults who participate in creative activities enjoy a higher quality of life and are less likely to experience loneliness, depression, and stress compared to peers who do not. However, most aging individuals engage in passive involvement in creativity, such as attending concerts, instead of creating music on their own due to a lack of professional music knowledge and a decline in physical ability.
Solution
Technology: Improve cognitively functioning.
Creation: Active involvement in creating music.
Reminiscence: Share memories and emotions with others.
Creative Aging
This installation inspires aging people to create music with touch and movement. It features touch-responsive scales on the outer ring, and allows real-time collaborative playing to generate accompaniment, similar to two quantum entities resonating with each other on opposite sides of the universe.
Human AI Co-Creativity
Quantum Melodies has the function of converts voices into song vocals. The AI-generated final composition song captures the present life of lonely elderly individuals and will serve as an estate they left forever to this world.
Quantum Melody Concept
The aesthetic of my installation was inspired by Quantum Entanglement: "When two particles interact, they become entangled." Each installation, placed in an isolated individual's room, is like a quantum on one side of the universe. When interacting with the installation, a lonely individual can resonate with others through music as the medium, regardless of the distance between them—similar to how two quanta resonate with each other.
App Design Elements
To enable real-time collaborative playing, a WiFi module is necessary to be added to the Arduino connection. This module sends the recording of touching the installation's sound to the app. The app, in turn, links to a server that collects recordings from different users and composed them into a song using artificial intelligence in the background. This allows collaborative music creation among aging people at different times and places.
The app has four main functions to better support elderly individuals in interacting with the Quantum Melodies installation. My goal is to design the visuals as simply as possible, enabling the elderly to clearly understand each step of use. The aesthetics of the app align with the quantum concept of the installation, visualizing how quantum elements resonate with each other in the universe. An important feature at the bottom is the ability to share songs with others to building social connection.
Audio to Text
User Scenario: Lonely Indivisual in Nursing House
Elderly individuals can experience loneliness and depression while living alone. Quantum Melodies encourages them to record their past memories and supports documenting their daily emotions through the app. Artificial Intelligence in the background turns the elderly's memories and emotions into lyrics and performs the singing back through the installation.
Fabrication Process
Eight wires are taped around the outer ring of the installation, sending eight signals to an Arduino module that is linked to sound files playing different Gamma music scales. Through user testing, I found that copper provides a more prompt response when touched by hand compared to conductive tape.
Prototyping
Touch to sound I²C workflow, Eight wires are taped around the outer ring of the installation, sending eight signals to an Arduino module that is linked to sound files playing different Gamma music scales. Through user testing, I found that copper provides a more prompt response when touched by hand compared to conductive tape.
Fabrication Prototype.
Storyboard of User Scenario.
