Cheng

Cheng is an interactive musical chess, which is designed based on Chinese traditional pentatonic music theory, and leads users to compose or play music by arranging pieces on the chessboard. The work combines traditional music art and new media technology, which is not only an exploration of new music interface design, but also a question about the possibility of human-computer art co-creation.

Based on the Chinese traditional pentatonic music theory, the work extracts a few characteristic patterns of notes array (phrase), and transforms these characteristic phrases into tangible pieces in corresponding shapes, then leads users to compose Chinese traditional pentatonic melody by placing the pieces on a "scale-time" two-dimensional chessboard. The work also designs four different interaction modes, which are record, puzzle, cycle and Zen mode, and develops an interactive device using intelligent hardware, aiming at spreading novel music experience and knowledge in an entertaining way.

"Cheng" means the sound of collision of jade articles. The work adopts Zen style in appearance and interactive design, hoping to convey the aesthetics of Chinese traditional music.