Music lessons in the Swedish metro: interactive installation

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The unusual piano was presented to the residents of Stockholm by the advertising agency DDB and the company Wolksvagen. Anyone can play it, and musical education is not at all necessary here. The only condition is to take the metro.

The interactive piano is part of the fun theory project, which aims to make people change by making ordinary things funnier. It is located on the steps at the exit of the Stockholm subway (Odenplan station) and is a great alternative to an escalator. Each rung of the ladder is a piano key. But the main highlight lies not in the coloring, but in the sound accompaniment: when "pressed", each key emits a corresponding sound, as if you were really playing the piano.

In addition to raising the mood of metro visitors, the unusual piano has another important task - the fight against laziness. Indeed, in our time, insufficient physical activity of residents of large cities has become a real problem. And the "singing steps" showed how this problem can be solved: with the advent of the installation, the frequency of using stairs instead of an escalator increased by 66 percent. Thus, this project proves that comfort is not always preferable and often gives way to the desire to have fun.

Such a piano, of course, is very popular with children, although adults are not averse to “playing a scale” on a fun instrument. The only thing that is kept silent is: what sounds does a staircase make when not one or two people go up it, but a whole crowd? Although, perhaps, in the Swedish metro, or at least at this station, this simply does not happen.

More clearly demonstrating the capabilities of the underground piano allows the video, which can be viewed here.