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Musical Heirlooms in a Digital AgeAnhe GuoAndrew Hettlinger

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03 INTRODUCTION

04 EXEMPLARS

06 CONCEPTS

Piano with Camera and Photo Frame

Stand

Digital Music Box

13 REFERENCES

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INTRODUCTION

Just about every family has an heirloom of one sort or another. They can be something as simple as a locket or a watch, or as extravagant as a family estate. Heirlooms have value because of what they represent. They represent a person's or family's history: where they've been and what they've done. They are evidence of the past pre-served in the present.

We chose to focus on heirlooms surrounding the topic of music, and more particular, heirlooms that would be meaningful to a family of musicians. Families of musicians have opportunities that other families do not. They can play together as a family, parents can tutor their children, and they can travel to exotic places for performances. We wanted to explore the domain of digital heirlooms that could preserve and protect these unique op-portunities in a way that would be meaningful to their owners.

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EXEMPLARS

This service, offered by an indi-vidual, was the only service discov-ered that deals with musical arti-facts as heirlooms. As part of this service, musical instruments that are no longer played are converted into usable table lamps. While this is a unique and creative service, the heirlooms that are created are static and may not convey much meaning to later generations.

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EXEMPLARS

The majority of services that we found offering digital heirlooms all generally offered the same services as these two. The status quo for today is to simply digitize exist-ing artifacts (photos, videos, old newspapers, etc), perform touch-up on them, and to optionally hold them for your surviving descen-dants. This is a logical and useful first step for preserving existing items which can be digitized, but the digital artifacts may not contain the same meaning as their physical counterparts. The digital should be tied to the physical.

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CONCEPTS | Piano with Camera and Photo Frame

Pianos are both individual and social instruments. When a family surrounds a piano to sing Christmas carols, fond memories are generated, but the interactions that compose those memories are difficult to capture. Additionally, if a family member does happen to have a camera at hand, interesting candid moments may occur and pass by before that person has a chance to make their camera ready to capture them.

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CONCEPTS | Piano with Camera and Photo Frame

An upright piano can be augmented to record it’s own history and the history of its players by adding a camera, recording device, and a digital picture frame. While the piano is being played, it will randomly take snapshots of its player and record the music that’s being played at that moment. This presents the op-portunity to capture unique and memorable moments with the piano. The images that are captured are then displayed in slide show fashion on a digital pic-ture frame which sets on the piano. If a person view-ing the images becomes interested in one in particu-lar, they can have the piano play back the music that was being played when that image was taken. Over several years, a history of the piano can be collected and shared all within the piano itself.

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Music professionals travel quite a lot for performances and various “gigs”. These trips have the potential to take the musicians to distant places where they would want to purchase souvenirs to remember their experi-ence there. These souvenirs can be collected and displayed as memories for themselves and their families if they happened to come along on the trip.

CONCEPTS | Embedded Memories

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CONCEPTS | Embedded Memories

Besides souvenirs, musical professionals also collect other objects related to their trips, such as lo-cal newspapers which report the performance, or video and CD recordings of the performances. The Embedded Memories device will connect the souvenirs with all the other digitalized data related to the same travel. When a souvenir is put on this device, the family could view related digital data on a TV or other display devices. In this way, the stories behind the heirlooms will be kept.

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Music boxes are delicate devices that have special meanings when given as gifts. The meaning is cre-ated both from the person giving the gift, and the music that is contained within. An emotional link is created for the recipient between the music and the giver so that the recipient is reminded of the giver each time they hear the music. The meaning created through the emotional link also adds value to the music box creating an heirloom-worthy object.

CONCEPTS | Digital Music Box

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CONCEPTS | Digital Music Box

The digital music box looks just like a traditional mu-sic box on the outside, but on the inside, the music device is replaced with a digital music player and an image screen is placed on the underside of the lid. The device can be loaded with music that is important to the owner and may have emotional meanings for them. The owner can also load images that are re-lated to the music that will be shown on the lid when the music is playing. When the device is passed on to a new owner, that new owner can experi- ence the memories of the previous owner(s) and also add their own music and images that will eventually be shared with the next owner.

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REFERENCES

Primary AttributionSource: Interview with the Clark family, Anhe Guo and Andrew Hettlinger 16 February 2012

Image: IPad on piano, Anhe Guo 24 February 2012

Image: Tom plays the saxophone, Andrew Hettlinger 24 February 2012

Image: Souvenirs, Andrew Hettlinger 24 February 2012

Image: Newspaper, Andrew Hettlinger 24 February 2012

Image: Saxophone engraving, Anhe Guo 24 February 2012

Image: Saxophone detail, Andrew Hettlinger 24 February 2012

Secondary AttributionSource: Instrument lamps http://suwardimusic.com/lamps.aspx

Source: Heritage Keep http://www.heritagekeep.com/heritagekeep-process.html

Source: Digital Heirlooms http://www.digitalheirlooms.com/

Image: Family Image, monasosh http://www.flickr.com/photos/89031137@N00/1409741735/

Image: Bookshelf http://were-wolf-101.deviantart.com/art/ bookshelf-169896325

Image: End table http://www.maisonsdumonde.com/UK/en/produits/fiche/ end-table-stockholm-110288.htm

Image: World map http://www.wpclipart.com/geography/world_maps/ world_map_simple.png.html

Image: Musical family, Andrea Rose http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrearosephotography/ 5307601322/

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