The Interactive Musical Planetarium is a digital audiovisual device created specifically and simultaneously for the Necker hospital in Paris (France) and the Johns Hopkins Children Center in Baltimore (USA).

This device consists of an interactive audiovisual installation for TV screen, computer and Kinect and a tablet application for bedridden children.

I designed and developed this device to provide children a space for creative expression, allowing them to draw music by moving their arms, head, body (Kinect version) or by tapping and sliding finger(s) (tablet version).

This work allows anyone, whatever their age or psychomotor ability to have fun, to express themselves and to feel valued through a playful experience. This device also motivates children to move, helps them to forget pain and promotes their rehabilitation. It also offers new channels of communication between therapists, patients and their families.

My goal is to help children to forget about the walls of the hospital, their isolation, to make them feel connected with their bodies and with the cosmos. On the screen, their silhouette is made up of hundreds of stars and is recomposed, reconfigured at every moment, like their physical body. By creating beautiful drawings and melodies, they regain confidence in themselves, confidence in their aptitudes and by extension in the therapeutic process. The installation proposes several modes of expression and communication: body interaction (the form of the silhouette is reconstituted on the screen by hundreds of stars), gestural interactions (the movements of the created hands of the melodic and visual lines, and when the two hands are brought closer together, a ball of energy that can be manipulated is created), facial interaction (when one opens the mouth, children’s choruses are heard , and hundreds of stars are emitted), etc. The drawings made by the bedridden children on the tablet version appear on the screen of the installation. These musical drawings can also be exchanged between the two hospitals to create communication between the children of the Johns Hopkins Children Center in Baltimore and those of the Necker Hospital in Paris.

This project was made possible thanks to Art Dans La Cité and the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the french Ministry of Culture and Communication.