The smooth melodies wafting through the Palo Alto Art Center draw inspiration from the songs of Bob Dylan, the sounds of Singapore and the energy of Daniel Roy, a boy who is banging away on a “harmony station.”
Roy is playing multiple roles: a kid playing a game; a musician improvising a track; and an explorer in the Magical Bridge Foundation’s latest experiment in promoting inclusion: a project known as Musical Bridge.
The Palo Alto-based foundation is best known for building inclusive playgrounds for users of all abilities, including locations in Palo Alto’s Mitchell Park and in Redwood City’s Red Morton Park. But since Aug. 26, Magical Bridge staff and volunteers have been making regular visits to the art center to watch visitors test out its newest AI-powered invention. The Musical Bridge exhibit will be at the center until Sept. 10.
The harmony station is a playful soundboard with two round speakers and an array of golden bars cresting over a large silver button. Hit the button, and you hear sounds that blend underlying compositions and your own motions and actions.
The users are layering their own melodies on top of underlying compositions created by Dr. Nolan Gasser, a musicologist who served as the architect of Pandora’s Music Genome Project, a comprehensive effort to analyze music by breaking it down to fundamental components. In one of the two harmony stations at the Art Center, you can hear sitars. In the other, it sounds like a xylophones.
The process of integrating Gasser’s compositions with individualized melodies is made harmonious by generative AI. The software makes sure that the basstrack in the underlying compositions and the personalized “supratrack” run in concord, said Curt Kinsky, a volunteer with Magical Bridge Foundation.
“Everything has been built on this harmony station in a certain chord, so these sounds are all concordant,” Kinsky said.
Olenka Villareal, founder of Magical Bridge. put it in lay terms: “Whatever you’re playing is going to sound good.”
The project was inspired by Vince Steckler, former CEO of Avast Technology and strong backer of the Magical Bridge Foundation, Villareal said. Steckler had moved to Singapore, where his wife is from, and began working with the foundation to build two Magical Bridge playgrounds there.
Steckler, a Bob Dylan fan, wanted the foundation to do something innovative at the Singapore playgrounds and he contributed some initial funding for the $175,000 project that would eventually become Musical Bridge. He was not around, however, to see the fruits of the labor. He was killed in a car accident in 2021. Villareal and Gasser worked on compositions that combined Dylan with Singaporean music.
“We continued in his honor,” Villarreal said.
To create the harmony stations, the foundation worked with Gasser, David Torgersen, an exhibit developer at the San Francisco Exploratorium, and Quantiphi, an AI company.
The harmony stations are still in their beta phase, and some kinks have yet to be worked out, Kinsky said. When Daniel and other children hit multiple buttons at once, the smooth melody becomes a frenetic strum. And if you bang persistently enough, the machine will shut down and demand a reset.
The foundation has been getting plenty of feedback, much of which is written in colorful word-bubble stickers that are appended to the glass wall at the Art Center. One user requested clearer instructions on how to use the machines. Another recommended bringing a harmony station to a hospital. Others said they enjoyed making music, whether solo or with a friend. Daniel suggested allowing users to pick their own songs as underlying tracks.
The instrument can be as simple or complex as you want it to be. Anne Johnston, the foundation’s chief experiment officer, said she was struck by the many different ways that the harmony stations have been used by the various visitors who had stopped by the exhibition.
“There was a musician who really played it,” Johnston said. “I didn’t realize musicians can really engage in it.”
It’s not just the software that’s in the beta phase. As the foundation looks to bring the all-inclusive ethos of its playgrounds to soundscape, it is also thinking of new ways to deploy these stations. Playgrounds? Domed settings? Corporate lobbies?
Wherever they go, Villarreal said the goal is to make the process of creating music accessible to more people.
“Music is how must cultures come together. This is a way for everyone to connect,” she said.
