Tuned Stairs is the introductory installation for the Fabrica exhibition at Center Pompidou on 6 October – 13 November 2006. As visitors walk down the stairs leading to the exhibition, their footsteps activate a musical note. The installation refocuses the attention of the visitor onto their footfalls – allowing them the opportunity to compose their timing, movement, and the resulting melody.
On each of the stairs is a matt-switch which activates the instrument-playing mechanism attached on the outside of the banister.
The armature is made of steel with a pull-thust solenoid attached to it. Above the solenoid is a tuned resonating bar facing down. As the matt-switch is activated, the solenoid momentarily strikes the resonating bar – resulting in a soft delicate sound resonating through the local area. The matt-switch’s signal gets fed into an arduino board which then activates the solenoid mechanism through a transistor circuit. Each Arduino has its own shield board built to easily connect the switches to their corresponding solenoid mechanisms.
<iframe src="//player.vimeo.com/video/11849660?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ff3579" width="800" height="600" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe> <p><a href="http://vimeo.com/11849660">Tuned Stairway 2006</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/danielhirschmann">Daniel Hirschmann</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>