Harmonic Driving Tech Specs

Driving your way through a tangle of tracks, you change the musical sounds around you. Harmony, structure and articulation are controlled by steering and tilting around potholes, loop-de-loops, and bumps, and navigating a variety of rendering styles. You turn down a sparkling track and a xylophone accompanies you; around the corner, a pothole sets off a bass riff.

The driver sits inside a giant wheel-shaped structure to play this arcade-style musical game. A "smart" steering column twists and bends through tracks that correspond to styles of music. The graphics are generated by a system which renders cartoon-style 3-D images in real-time. At Lincoln Center there will be 3 Harmonic Driving set-ups.

An RS/6000 computer by IBM generates the visual environment using Rolf Rando's artistic, three-dimensional rendering system.

The graphics are displayed arcade-style on a high-resolution monitor in the Harmonic Driving Booth.

A recently-invented steering spring measures twist, bend and tilt, and sends its information both to the RS6000 for graphics and to an IBM Pentium PC which generates the music.

An AWE 32 sound card by Creative Technology, Inc. sends out MIDI to the synthesizer.

The music for Harmonic Driving is a fast-paced instrumental piece that is generated on the Morpheus synthesizer by E-Mu Systems, Inc.

A 75 watt amplifier strengthens the audio and sends it to a pair of K-RoK Studio Monitors by KRK.

All connecting cables were donated by Belden Wire and Cable.

(image by Tanya Bezreh)