The Music Ball Project: Concept, Design, Development, Performance

Alexander Refsum Jensenius, and Arve Voldsund

Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

Abstract:

We report on the Music Ball Project, a longterm, exploratory project focused on creating novel instruments/controllers with a spherical shape as the common denominator. Besides a simple and attractive geometrical shape, balls afford many different types of use, including play. This has made our music balls popular among widely different groups of people, from toddlers to seniors, including those that would not otherwise engage with a musical instrument. The paper summarises our experience of designing, constructing and using a number of music balls of various sizes and with different types of sound-producing elements.

Citation:

Alexander Refsum Jensenius, and Arve Voldsund. 2012. The Music Ball Project: Concept, Design, Development, Performance. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1180579

BibTeX Entry:

  @inproceedings{Jensenius2012,
 abstract = {We report on the Music Ball Project, a longterm, exploratory project focused on creating novel instruments/controllers with a spherical shape as the common denominator. Besides a simple and attractive geometrical shape, balls afford many different types of use, including play. This has made our music balls popular among widely different groups of people, from toddlers to seniors, including those that would not otherwise engage with a musical instrument. The paper summarises our experience of designing, constructing and using a number of music balls of various sizes and with different types of sound-producing elements.},
 address = {Ann Arbor, Michigan},
 author = {Jensenius, Alexander Refsum and Voldsund, Arve},
 booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression},
 doi = {10.5281/zenodo.1180579},
 issn = {2220-4806},
 keywords = {music balls, instruments, controllers, inexpensive},
 publisher = {University of Michigan},
 title = {The Music Ball Project: Concept, Design, Development, Performance},
 url = {http://www.nime.org/proceedings/2012/nime2012_161.pdf},
 year = {2012}
}