Critically acclaimed musician Matthew Dear's latest interactive experience lets visitors create their own soundtrack  
Producer and electronic musician Matthew Dear has worked closely with a collective of NEW INC members (interactive developer Charlie Whitney, animator Philip Sierzega, music interaction and spatial sound team Dave Rife and Gabe Liberti, music interaction developer Yotam Mann), and environmental design team The Principals to create Delqa, an immersive sound installation that lets your movement influence the music. It incorporates interactive architecture that allows visitors to manipulate their environment, and distort the pitch and rhythm of Dear’s soundtrack as they do so.          

“As people push on the walls and displace the membranes they’re actually able to change the quality of the music with these interactions,” explain Delqa’s creators. “It’s a very different experience to playing a typical instrument. This is much more about building a world from music.” The installation incorporates 8 Xbox Kinects and a responsive lighting system to create a 3D audio environment in a mesh maze, for visitors to climb, push and crawl through, becoming a part of project.

As well as Dear’s musical input, Delqa’s environment – located in the New Museum’s ground-floor space at 231 Bowery between 6th and 9th August – is the result of a number of creative collaborators, including artists, designers, animators, architects and acoustic specialists, promising an innovative way to incorporate the audience into the artwork. Recently we've seen a number of projects which use tech for an innovative approach to viewer experience, including Monotype and Field's Type Reinvented, and Nokia's latest foray into VR cameras.