Music and Ink:

The Chromatic Canvas is an interactive installation that forms a live relationship between piano and drawing, inviting play in a hybrid and collaborative experience.

This work served as my graduation project from Design Academy Eindhoven during Dutch Design Week 2023. Using a mix of AV equipment and softwares, I developed a system which allows one’s drawings to be displayed and animated in real time with an electric piano. In other words, a way for musicians and drawers to jam together!

A visual element to playing music:

This setup is one edition in my research in designing visualisers for instruments.

Working closely with programming software in school, I became fascinated with the idea of adding something visual to the experience of playing music. As I played more, I realised how closely related music is to shapes, patterns, and symmetry.

I didn’t want to make visualisers that were only audio reactive and looked cool. I wanted to design systems where the instruments controlled the images directly through MIDI signals—ones that were tailored to an instrument’s unique characteristics. For example, the piano has 88 keys and pedals that can sustain many notes at once, whereas a drum kit has fewer components, works through triggers, and focuses more on that “oomph” feeling. It was an interesting challenge to make visualisers for instruments that worked differently.

An invitation to play in a world of tutorials

It can be a daunting task to approach an instrument or brush for the first time. There’s a shyness or a fear of failure that comes with not knowing what to do.

For my installation at DDW23, I aimed to test the visitors of the graduation show to see if my visualiser would inspire people to try some piano or drawing. To my delight, it caught the eyes of both players and non-players alike. The new relationship between the two activities made them curious. They were eager to ask me how it worked. What happens to the animation if the piano keys are pressed gently vs firmly? What do the higher notes do compared to the lower notes? It was fun to see people experiment while working together—one person on the piano and one person drawing.

I also noticed that I’d play new sounds depending on whether I focused on the feedback of the visuals or the drawings, as each combination would be different.

Special Thanks

Earlwyn Covington
Gabriel Eszo Richard