Air Symphony Chairs is an installation comprised of a set of old-fashioned guest chairs. Sitting on any spot on a given chair creates a loud, air-squeezing sound. Each area on the chairs plays a different musical note pitch. These sounds are left up to interpretation by the participants’ imaginations.
The artwork is inspired by the idea of an unexpected and a ridiculous circumstance we all face at one point that, when it has passed, turns into a story we laugh to death about.
—“Your quiet sound shakes my heart”—
Interaction
When someone sits on a chair, sounds of squeezing air are emitted. With the action of sitting on the specific object – a chair – the sounds that come out are purposefully left to the participants’ imaginations to interpret; it is never specified what the origin sources of the sounds is or what they are intended to remind the participant of.
Air Symphony Chairs relies on techniques of making a chair that developed from the project TV’s Story. Each position on the chairs has a different pitch. The chairs play seven squeezed air sounds when someone sits on them. The squeezed air sounds are tuned to different pitches of notes: C7, D7, E7, F7, G7, A7, B7, and C8.
If the set is played in ascending scale correctly, hidden music will be played, and audiences can still bounce on the chairs to play notes along with the music. The artwork is coded with HTML5 and JavaScript.
The most difficult part of this project was the process of inserting entire buttons into the chairs. As they are real vintage chairs of some value, tearing up their cloth and leather may have severely damaged them. Hence, the solution was to put all the buttons and wires inside the chairs from the bottom.
Air Symphony Chairs was also developed into a sketch short film called “Odd Job.” The story is about a young nine-to-five job applicant who is waiting for an interview. Suddenly, he has to face a suspicious circumstance to prove his innocence, a ridiculous moment that could happen in a formal situation.
The juxtapositions of formal and informal, normal and unusual, and intention and incident, which were the original artwork’s implications, are designed into a plot and explored in detail in this sketch.
Featured in this event:
Living Room : At the Moment of Living, an interactive installation art exhibition, shows old goods with hidden stories behind them. These pieces of furniture and other household goods have had new functions added to them, inspired by human usage behaviors but expressed from the points of view of the objects as if they were alive. The exhibition also connotes the contrasts between control and being-in-control, as well as between the living and the lifeless.
Tuang T 
One thought on “Air Symphony Chairs”