Shrine of Sympathetic Resonance, Player Piano (2019)

Concept by Tyson Ayers
Collaboration with Anahita Aliasgarian, Rich DDT, Cameron Nagai, Brad Stroud

An installation inside the Shrine of Sympathetic Resonance (by Tyson Ayers) at Burning Man 2019, this player piano played MIDI files on a real piano. The piano hammers are actuated with servos controlled by an Arduino Uno. I participated in the design and construction of the mechanism, then went on to design and build much of the software that powers it.

Player Piano

More about the larger piece (as described by the artist): The Shrine of Sympathetic Resonance immerses participants in the phenomena of 20,000 musical strings sympathetically resonating the sounds they make while inside. The wonder & joy induced by this experience invites participants to play with their own sounds by singing, laughing, crying, or howling.