Saturday, March 17, 2012

March Experience Zone - Singing Crystal Goblets


Well it is finally up and running! It was took some logistical acrobatics but if there was one profession you would want to count on for such creativity (on a dime too) it is public librarianship. Here is the final product out in the music collection.

The goblets were tuned with marked water levels (to make up for evaporation) to the scale of E flat. There weren't many other options as we experimented. There was a brief instructional video put out on how to get the best sound and a quick-glance fact sheet about what makes crystal goblets sing, why use a wet finger, as well as Guinness World Record references.

As always, it was very much a group effort. The conception came from wrangler Zen, the tuning and construction help came from wrangler Cory, the instructional film from concierge Nick, IT Matt backed us up to help us convert the cumbersome FlipCamera format into DVD player-able. My part was overseeing the project (construction with Cory, filming with Nick, etc), getting the goblets (testing them with water bottle in hand at ARC Thrift), doing the informational signs, etc etc. 

The work really seemed to pay off when, not more than 30 minutes on the floor, the goblets attracted about everyone in the teen area. There were literally squeals of delight from a handful of them - reminded me of my art instructor days when I got out of the oil pastels. At one point, I couldn't get one of the teens to leave the library when we were closing because he kept playing with it. "We open tomorrow at 9:30am if you want to play with it some more". He was thrilled, "You mean it will be here when I come back?!" I was thinking - with the work it took to get this thing going, I am hoping to get a few weeks out of it at least!

And as you can see from the film below, we had a great time as staff testing out the goblets along the way too. 

Have I mentioned recently how much I love my job?