A collaborative project between researchers from the Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham and pianist and composer Maria Kalllionpaa to create a unique performance composition that combined contemporary piano with elements of computer games.

Climb is a non-linear piece of music accompanied by graphics which involves pianists negotiating an ascent of a mountain, choosing their own path as they play, encountering weather, animals and other obstacles along the way.

The composition consists of 23 fragments or musical events that can be pieced together in different orders on the application of a specially developed computer code ‘musicodes’, enabling pianists to create different pieces of music to play and audiences to experience.

Climb was performed at the first ‘All Your Base’ festival at the National Videogame Arcade, Antenna and the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham.

Performance Archive: https://www.semanticaudio.ac.uk/demonstrators/33-climb-archive/

Link: https://youtu.be/iU3pgUL5ERc?list=PLUGIxyhzRjwBUPbmOxXtqzCfSm24AS4rm

University of Nottingham Press Release: Computer codes make sweet music for self-playing piano

Publication:

Maria Kallionpää, Chris Greenhalgh, Adrian Hazzard, D. Weigl, Kevin R. Page, and Steve Benford. 2017. Composing and realising a game-like performance for disklavier and electronics. In New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME).