TAPPING FRIEND

An interactive exhibit on synchronization and cooperation between humans and a virtual partner

TAPPING FRIEND is an interactive science game for everyone between 6 and 99 years and is aimed to provide a playful experience of synchronization and cooperation between one or two humans and a virtual partner – the maestro. The players tap in time with the maestro on little drums and the system provides immediate feedback on their synchronization success by showing their taps relative to the maestro’s taps and by counting the taps that were on time and the taps that were too early or too late. The aim of the game is to achieve as many on-time taps as possible.

The maestro’s degree of cooperation differs between play modes, and players should experience the different levels of cooperativity while tapping. Players have to develop different strategies to stay on beat with their fellow players and the virtual partner, the maestro.

There are four different play modes that offer different levels of cooperation by the maestro: in the first play mode, the maestro keeps a strict beat and does not react to either of the two players. The players have to adapt to stay on time. In the second play mode, the maestro changes his tempo and gets faster or slower or both. It is difficult to stay on beat while the tempo changes. In the third play mode, the maestro establishes a cooperative tapping behavior: he “listens” to the taps of his fellow players and adapts his tapping tempo (and phase) to stay as closely together as possible. In the fourth play mode, the maestro cues in with four beats and leaves the two players on their own. They can either maintain the tempo as closely as possible or develop their own tempo or rhythm.

This exhibit implements sensorimotor models of temporal coordination that are based on current research on synchronization and communication in music ensembles (a research project funded by the FWF P 24546).

Dates

TAPPING FRIEND has been presented for the first time at the Forschungsfest 2015 on 12. and 13. September 2015 near the Vienna Naschmarkt. After that it was shown at the 3rd Vienna Talk on Music Acoustics at the mdw and will join the interactive traveling exhibition Wirkungswechsel of the Science Center Netzwerk and will be presented all over Austria.

References

Goebl, W., & Guggenberger, D. (2015).
TappingFriend – An interactive science exhibit for experiencing synchronicity with real and artificial partners,
in: Proceedings of the 3rd Vienna Talk on Music Acoustics, 16–19 Sept 2015. Vienna: Institute of Music Acoustics (IWK), University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw), pp. 227–230.

Development

TAPPING FRIEND (IM TAKT BLEIBEN)
was created by:
Werner Goebl
Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (OFAI)
Institute of Music Acoustics, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna

Realized and designed by:
Dominikus Guggenberger / Daniel Fabry
www.dominikusguggenberger.at

In cooperation with:
Science Center Netzwerk

Made possible by: