HOW IT ALL STARTED-Ellen Fishman-Johnson
Last Spring, I happened upon a presentation of work from the Drexel ExCITe Center at the opening of the Next Fab Studio. ExCITe's Director, Dr. Youngmoo Kim showed us an app that he and his students developed for the Philadelphia Orchestra that followed a performance and then activated program notes depending on the place in the score. It was incredibly exciting to think of the possibilities for this technology and that is when I began to think about triggering a app based light show rather than program notes.
I began to think about students composing for an orchestra but I also wanted to do a project that was relevant to students. After my Mural in Motion project (http://muralinmotion.tumblr.com/), I knew I could teach students to remix music over the course of 8-10 weeks and that students would produce create great results. I then spent a few months organizing a plan for students to create remixed music for a student orchestra which triggers a student created light show app.