5 Percent Piano: An Augmented Piano with Playful Audio Response

Inspired by the practice of street art, we speculated on a scenario of non-visual street art, in which everyday objects are augmented with audio responses. We used ubiquitous computing technologies to augment an idle piano in a university building lobby with a motion-triggered, novel audio response that aims to surprise and engage passers-by in a playful way. The resulting installation, titled ‘5 Percent Piano’, was deployed in its original setting for half a day. It received both positive and negative reactions from naive passers-by. We concluded that the augmented audio response has the potential to raise awareness about ignored everyday objects and can elicit playful social engagement around it, however, when designing for such installations, more contextual factors need to be taken into account.