LelioSwing: Rediscovering music classics while playing in duo with Lelio Luttazzi

Museums and exhibitions traditionally present pieces of preserved human knowledge in a static manner, letting their public observe and analyze what can be heard or seen. Sight and hearing are hence the two senses, out of the five available ones, that are usually engaged in such scenarios. Recently, information and communication technologies have been put to good use to increase the amount of participation that visitors experience while seeing an exhibition, engaging for example the other senses (taste, smell and touch) in playful ways with modern sensors and actuators, but also serving as building blocks for applications that support novel methodologies of knowledge transfer. In fact, the ephemeral part of human knowledge and experience is the most difficult to capture and, consequently, the hardest to hand down to posterity. Although this remains an open challenge, far from being definitely solved, many steps forward have been made so far. It is hence today possible to go beyond watching or listening, supporting the performance of actions and the construction of new practical experiences while visiting a museum or an exhibition. In this paper we describe practical example of how we implemented such ideas in an interactive system that will be shown in downtown Rome at the Trajan Forum Exposition center. In brief, we constructed an interactive system that lets visitors playing a piano together with the Italian Jazz star Lelio Luttazzi. Visitors, hence, can participate and build their own experience playing with the real artist, rather than solely listening to the artist's music or watching the artist's pictures.