We teamed up with ON/OFF to develop a playful interactive multimedia instrument called PINGBALL for the Berlin based arts festival “48h Neukölln”.

 

Based on ON/OFF’s BOULE project from 2016 in Brussels which was their contribution to develop a mobile playground for kids, the PINGBALL project took the idea one step further and transformed the human-sized tensegrity ball structure into an interactive instrument for electronic music.

 

Our part was to develop the multimedia concept and setup that should be completely invisible and hidden inside the pipes of the PINGBALL.
We developed a robust gyrometer-sensor that sends its data from the PINGBALL via WiFi to a laptop. The received coordination-data then gets translated with a custom developed processing script into MIDI signals. These can then be used by any electronic music software to trigger any instrument or effect. The audio gets sent back to the PINGBALL structure via WiFi and is then played from an array of hidden speakers inside the pipes.

 

When a visitor pushes the PINGBALL structure its sound changes – just like an oversized magical instrument. Through this feedback loop, people are invited to push and pull the PINGBALL and by doing so to reclaim public space and have collective experiences in a playful and inviting way.




We teamed up with ON/OFF to develop a playful interactive multimedia instrument called PINGBALL for the Berlin based arts festival “48h Neukölln”.

 

Based on ON/OFF’s BOULE project from 2016 in Brussels which was their contribution to develop a mobile playground for kids, the PINGBALL project took the idea one step further and transformed the human-sized tensegrity ball structure into an interactive instrument for electronic music.

 

Our part was to develop the multimedia concept and setup that should be completely invisible and hidden inside the pipes of the PINGBALL.
We developed a robust gyrometer-sensor that sends its data from the PINGBALL via WiFi to a laptop. The received coordination-data then gets translated with a custom developed processing script into MIDI signals. These can then be used by any electronic music software to trigger any instrument or effect. The audio gets sent back to the PINGBALL structure via WiFi and is then played from an array of hidden speakers inside the pipes.

 

When a visitor pushes the PINGBALL structure its sound changes – just like an oversized magical instrument. Through this feedback loop, people are invited to push and pull the PINGBALL and by doing so to reclaim public space and have collective experiences in a playful and inviting way.