This artistic work is designed as a permanent fixture for the La Fougeraie hospital, built to give hospitalized children an interactive musical and sensory experience. (La Fougeraie hospital parc, St Didier aux Monts d'or, France)
An extensible installation
In the “permanent fixture” version, the first names of children or of their parents or other sound materials can be recorded by the care institution personnel and added to the collection of triggered sounds.
The senstive tree itself is adapted for a disabled public. Its base is flared, to allow wheelchair access. The interactive plates are actionable from the top, above head level, or from the side, allowing anyone to touch the tree.
There are 7 or 8 such plates on a tree. Its diameter is roughly 1.5 meter, which lets 4 people in a wheelchair simultaneously touch the tree.
Type of interaction: Touch, caresses
Sensors used: Capacitive sensors
Sound production: Vibration motors
Original music type: Calm and low-pitched holding layers, evolving in time, depending on which plates are touched by the public.
the sensitive Tree
The sensitive tree is an interactive and musical metal sculpture in the shape of a tree, decorated with bark inlays and sensitive to touch. Each contact, each caress makes it vibrate. From these vibrations emerge calm and benevolent notes, emitted directly by the sounding skin of the tree. A lighting strip is set next to each touch-sensitive plate of the interactive tree that light up with each hand contact on that plate. Along with the vibrations, a specific “soundscape” is triggered by the touch of each participant.