I’ve been meaning to post these for a while, examples of augmenting sound in the playground…

“At first sight the Laughing Swing looks like a simple, regular swing. When you sit on it, it chuckles. As you swing, it laughs, and the higher you go, the harder it laughs. At the peak swinging it is laughing [...]

4 years ago I saw a great 3d animation called Pipe Dream, part of a DVD of animations called Animusic. Music played by robots, in particular Pipe Dreams was played by very co-ordinated bouncing balls. I recommend you watch it here. The creators never claimed this to be real, but some prankster did.
Well [...]

“Phase is a sound generation system, bringing sound immersion, haptic response movement and visual immersion into play. The proposed musical demonstration (an interactive installation for science and technology museums, theme parks…) has two goals: firstly, to enable users to discover and learn about sound space and music, thanks to their immersion in visual, sound, and [...]

(concept image)
Usman Haque has been commissioned to create Evoke for the Illuminating York festival. You can see the work from on Fri 26 Oct until Sat 3 Nov, from 6-11pm. From the website…
“Evoke is a massive animated 80,000 lumen projection, which will light up the facade of York Minster. The facade is brought [...]

Miniorgan.com is a site documenting Erics collection of rare and vintage musical electronic toys. There are 112 in this online library. Aside from the many synthesizers, I find these toys delightful to look at in terms of their intended interaction and the aesthetic.

Tomy Voice Corder (1972)
“BEST MUSICAL TOY OF THE WORLD!!! Play & [...]