Virtual orchestra makes you a modern-day maestro

Christine Ottery, contributor

(Image: Geoff Caddick/PA/Science Museum)

This is no time for hesitation. I'm conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra playing Gustav Holst?s The Planets in one of the interactive pods at the Science Museum?s Universe of Sound installation. All right, so I'm only going through the motions while hearing the music piped in, but it's true you have to be decisive with your movements as you follow the time signature pattern on the screen. The flowing and chopping movements of conducting with my right hand make this feel like Microsoft?s Kinect for musical karatekas.

The pod display is showing me where to put my hands. Coloured lights flash as I hit the right spot on the right beat: two beats in a bar - during the Jupiter movement - feels quite rewarding, while five beats - in the Neptune movement - involves following a complicated choreography of hand gesture to time. Much trickier, yet somehow I still managed to make the screen flash its approval. For children, there is also a ?comet? setting that shows a multi-coloured light blazing across the screen as you impersonate a maestro.

The backdrop to the graphics is a film of the Philharmonia playing what you are conducting. As well as The Planets, there is also a recording of Jody Talbot?s World, Stars, Systems, Infinity, which even allows you to control the sound levels and timing of each part of the orchestra. The more I have to watch what I?m doing, the more I realise how difficult it is to observe and listen at the same time.

Luckily, conductors? brains have a special ability to be able to look and hear concurrently, according to MRI brain scans - while most of us have to give less attention to what we are seeing in order to focus on what we are hearing.

Other nuggets of scientific wisdom at the installation regard specific instruments. For instance, trombonists can cause a shock wave faster than the speed of sound when playing; some organs emit sounds at a lower frequency than we can hear but that may cause us anxiety or the shivers; and that now many harps are made from carbon fibre instead of wood because it is stronger.

I was interested to discover that Bj?rk worked with MIT Media Labs to create a new kind of harp, called a pendulum harp, for her Biophilia project. It plays as the pendulums swing with gravity. I was also surprised to find out there are traditional symphony orchestra instruments I had never heard of, such as the celesta, a keyboard instrument that sounds like bells chiming.

The best thing about exploring the installation is that you can hear the various sections of the 132-instrumentalist ensemble deconstructed between ten different rooms. As you wander round, you can hear the strings, percussion, woodwind, brass, the harps, and the keyboards - as well as being able to see the musicians play in HD on massive screens. This gives you the sensation of actually inhabiting each section of the orchestra - as does some nifty head-cam shooting that gives you the musician?s perspective.

The different orchestra sections come together in a grand central hub, which shows a representative of each section and the conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen, on an overhead screen. ?You can let the music guide you through the installation,? says Philharmonia?s Murray Goulstone. ?If you hear the string section come in, or the brass, then you can go to visit them.?

Holst?s seven-movement work seems ideally suited to this kind of interactive treatment. It has a drama that even a non classical music-aficionado can appreciate, as well as the familiarity of especially the Jupiter movement - anyone that has heard the hymn Jerusalem will be recognise the melody, and being immersed in the orchestral experience is a rare treat for those of us who have not touched an instrument since our school music lessons.

Universe of Sound is open from 23 May to 8 July at the Science Museum, London, UK, before touring to Birmingham and Canterbury. Free.

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