Forest fires occur regularly around the world, often with catastrophic results. But what if they could be extinguished by playing a few melodious notes on a keyboard? While that's not anywhere near possible, it is the premise of a new virtual environment game from three NYU Physical Computing grads.

Arboration puts the fate of a  forest at your fingertips. Users play a touch-sensitive, piano-like keyboard to populate a virtual landscape. If the music is deemed harmonically consonant, trees will grow. But if the music is dissonant, the forest will burn! The quality of the music played is determined by analyzing the intervals between notes.

We like the concept of Arboration, though the graphics feel like a nod back to the 1995 film Hackers, and it doesn't look like the virtual growth and destruction are very dynamic, especially when considering games like the Sim series. Not to mention, there are plenty of great musicians who, by Arboration's standards, would produce nothing but scorched earth.