The glass organ: Musical instrument augmentation for enhanced transparency

Abstract

The Organ and Augmented Reality (ORA) project has been presented to public audiences at two immersive concerts, with both visual and audio augmentations of an historic church organ. On the visual side, the organ pipes displayed a spectral analysis of the music using visuals inspired by LED-bar VU-meters. On the audio side, the audience was immersed in a periphonic sound field, acoustically placing listeners inside the instrument. The architecture of the graphical side of the installation is made of acoustic analysis and calibration, mapping from sound levels to animation, visual calibration, real-time multi-layer graphical composition and animation. It opens new perspectives to musical instrument augmentation where the purpose is to make the instrument more legible while offering the audience enhanced artistic content. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.