HARP: collaborative music for inner city parks

I love seeing new concepts for people making music together, particularly those who aren’t trained in music composition or theory and for who more traditional instruments would be quite difficult to engage with.

So the HARP (Harmony and Acoustic Research Project) — which would see these interesting circular desks and seating placed in inner city parks around the world — is a really cool one.

It looks as if you could have up to four people playing the instrument together at any one time (probably more knowing how people crowd around anything a bit different and interactive in a public space — see the video below for a simple prototype instrument)

Sounds could be fixed or selectable, and apparently there could even be a more global sense of collaboration by remotely connecting these instruments via satellite and sharing in vast global composition.

Practically there could be some problems, of course. There are always idiots around to vandalise stuff like this, but on the plus side, perhaps local buskers and musicians might use it in their own live performances?