Rudolph Harp

Interactive instrument & sound installation
Yale School of Architecture
2022

Individual Project

Interactive music installation, transforming the Rudolph Hall into a playable harp.

Yale School of Architecture’s Rudolph Hall is a brutalist landmark known for its ribbed wall texture, which was bush-hammered into the concrete after months of tedious, manual work, and what at the time must have seemed incessant rhythmic clanging noise.

I have spent 6 years of my life behind these walls.

Undulations of each vertical concrete relief, or “sting”, picked up by a laser ToF sensor, is converted to a waveform and sent through a digital oscillator that generates a unique texture for its sound.

The chosen wall has 50 vertical reliefs, therefore making a harp with 50 strings.

A hand-tracking algorithm detects the presence, depth, and speed of the hand in real time, triggers when fingers cross strings, and allows the instrument to be played live.

The synthesized sound echos between the walls of Rudolph Hall.