A partnership with Tinderbox Orchestra all about play, music, and building wonderful things.

photo by Chris Scott

In 2016 I partnered with the fantastic Tinderbox Orchestra to run a series of workshops with the theme of “Room to Play”. We asked for applications from young artists who wanted to learn more about music, technology, games, and generally building fun things. The aim was for them to build a series of fun musical installations for Hidden Door Festival 2016.

We got an incredible set of applications, it was very hard to choose only a dozen or so people to be involved – it ended up being a great mix of visual artists, musicians, coders, and game developers (among other things!).

I designed a set of workshops to teach this group about “play” in a hands-on way. We built synthesizers, rapidly prototyped board games, made musical compositions, and more. The group was fantastic, I am very lucky to have been able to work with them.

photo by Darragh Quinn

In the end the group developed a fantastic set of things for our Room to Play show at Hidden Door, including musical trampolines, a sonic spiderweb, and a lovely set of nested suitcases which each contained a different soundscape. Several of these instruments were then used in a large-scale improvisational performance with the full orchestra, which was totally amazing.

photo by Chris Scott

This video (made by Oana Stanciu, one of the participants) showcases the whole process really well…