Mesa Musical Shadows

From the beginning of the project, Daily’s team went to Mesa in Arizona to conduct workshops and public consultations. These meetings showed us that the difficult co-existence with the harsh sun was a major preoccupation. This informed our core concept: to use shadow as an interaction interface  

We tested our concept using Post-it Notes during one of these workshops. This allowed us both to demonstrate and receive immediate feedback on our idea early in the process.

We had the opportunity to present a functioning prototype on-site during the Mesa Arts Center’s Spark Festival. Thousands of visitors attend the two-day festival, the perfect chance to field test a number of different sensor layouts, shapes and densities, and different types of sounds as well.

With the notes from the previous prototype, we created and tested another full-scale sensor layout, this time with chalk and coloured tape in a parking lot. This allowed us to make quick adjustments and to finalize an approximate layout.

We then created another low-tech layout prototype. This one laid out in paper full scale in a parking lot behind our studio, giving us a sense of how it would finally look for a visitor. It allowed us one last chance to make refinements before committing to the final layout.

This prototype was a technical dress rehearsal, allowing us to run the software and hardware for a number of weeks in a row, testing for bugs. It also gave us a platform for testing and tweaking the audio.