#IKSCHRIJFGESCHIEDENIS
#IWRITEHISTORY
#IWRITEHISTORY is a Belgian organisation that draws the attention to the wealth of living traditions. From a mime to a furniture maker, from a bride to a sheperd, everybody writes history. All of these techniques and traditions are called “intangable cultural heritage”. They are not tangible and can only survive by the people who are doing it.
For a school assignment I had to choose a living tradition that is close to me. I wanted to create a campaign to save this heritage from dissapearing. As I am studying digital design, naturally the outcome had to be something like a video, an app, or a game.
As a die hard brass musician in wind- and brassbands I felt the need to focus on a music project.
It is not going very well with the small town bands in Belgium due the lack of new, young musicians. A lot of bands have already dissapeared because of this issue. The tradition of playing in a band is too beautiful to let this just go down.
RESEARCH
I started this project with some research. I held a survey about the interests for playing in a band as an amateur musician. Quickly, my survey reached a lot of bands in Belgium and also the Belgian organisation for amateur musicians (Vlamo). With their support, I received 600 completed surveys in just three days. They gave me following results.
From these results, I was able to conclude that people who never played an instrument, were never properly informed about what bands are doing. It is also very clear that mostly, people start playing in a band through the influence of their family, following by interest and friends, and in fourth place, through school.
I wanted to increase the percentage of people who started playing music through school. This percentage is very low now and this way, I could reach the kids that are just old enough to start playing music, the 8-year-olds.
WHAT?
So I came up with Hoempapa, a campaign to reach the children in primary schools.
Hoempapa is a virtual reality game where children can experience how it feels to play in a real orchestra.
Once they have put the helmet on they can see a menu with all the instruments around them. When they look at an instrument, it starts moving and playing a little tune, so they can hear how it sounds. Once they choose an instrument they like, the game starts.
These are some instruments the children can choose.
This is how the interface looks in VR.
Normally the animation of the instrument plays when you're looking at the instrument.
Now they play one by one automatically.
Once the instrument is chosen, the child will get the experience of sitting in the middle of a big orchestra that is going to play a concert. For example, when you have chosen a clarinet you are actually sitting between the other clarinets.
But the experience would not be complete if you could not play along with them. So I modelled a controller that the children can hold in their hands.
The controller I modelled and printed with a 3D printer
The controller has 3 buttons, these buttons match with 3 lines of music. On these lines, notes are moving and when you hit the right button on the right time, you can hear yourself play along with them, if you press the wrong button, it sounds out of tone.
So, if we place this simplified music sheet inside a real orchestra and we take the controller in the hand, you get this.
This is the very first virtual reality prototype of Hoempapa
After these kids had an amazing experience they get a little present to take home with, this way they can tell their parents about playing in a band. The one and only Hoempapa keychain. Fresh from the lasercutter.
With this project I hope more children would start to play an instrument, this way we could save the tradition of wind- and brassbands.
