John Klima's Glasbead is a cross-disciplinary work in which multiple users can make music through a visual, interactive interface. Glasbead is inspired by Herman Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game, where ideas are played like musical notes in a futuristic game. Instead of ideas, users of Klima's Glasbead move stems around in the orb, which play musical tones when hit by hammers also within the orb.
Klima, a software programmer with a BFA in photography, created Glasbead after freelancing for Microsoft. The piece of art is cross-disciplinary, one characteristic of New Media art, combining programming and visual art to make a program that creates music via a visual interface, with the ability for users to collaborate and have a shared experience with the piece. This piece and artist interested me for these reasons. Many traditional art forms involve an individual experience: the viewer, by oneself, interacts with the art and has a personal experience. With Glasbead, multiple people can experience the same piece and interact with the program and each other. The crossing of disciplines is also very fun for me--this is art that has been programmed, and the visual aspects of the art have a direct connection to sound-music is made by one's placement of the visual component.
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