UMPRUM.wav - presentation at Milan Design Week 2023

The Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) will present an interactive installation UMPRUM.wav at the 2023 Milan Design Week created in collaboration with Melodize. The project develops the theme of the connection between music and design, originally commissioned to students of the Product Design Studio.

During workshops with experts, students focused on acoustic, analogue, and digital music production while integrating design with new ways of teaching music education. The outcome was experimental musical instruments. At the Milan show, the studio is presenting five selected student works that are both design objects and functional instruments.

The exhibition space, which gives the impression of a music laboratory, will allow visitors to see individual instruments and experiment with their sound in cooperation with the new Melodize educational app. Many musicians have participated in the development of the app, including DNÉ, Teepee, Albert Černý, Thom Artway, Tereza Rays, and Never Sol. Thanks to the app, the Milanese audience will have the opportunity to learn basic musical skills and apply them further. Without touching the instruments directly, visitors will have the opportunity not only to listen to finished instrument recordings but also to combine and transform them freely using a special control panel. The audience can thus create unique compositions and become direct co-creators of the installation.  The overall impression of the space and the creation of music will be enhanced by a custom-made interactive projection by students of the Studio of Design and Digital Technology.

Apart from melodies generated by visitors, the exhibition will also be enlivened by live jam sessions of Czech and Italian musicians. Thanks to this, it will be possible to see the use of new atypical musical instruments function as original creations.

The joint project of UMPRUM students and the Melodize app expands the possibilities of music education and playfully mediates interaction with the world of music.

Project Leadership: Michal Froněk, and Jan Němeček.
Exhibitors: Miloslav Chytil, Theodor Hozák, Ivo Jedlička, Natália Krišťáková, and Karolína Vintrová.
Text: Vít Novák, and Zuzana Řičářová.
Architecture and installation: Jan Lechner, Sofia Artemeva, Ivo Jedlička, Miloslav Chytil, and Theodor Hozák.
Production: Michaela Kaplánková.
Graphic design: Oskar Koutný, and Kateřina Pravdová.
Video Projection: Alžběta Horňáková, Jakub Žanony, Klára Vlachová, and Natálie Portíková.
Musical accompaniment: Sára Vondrášková, and Sarah Jedličková.
Technical support: Karim Tarakji, Štěpán Kovář, and Matyáš Černý.
Recording studio: Soundsquare
Technology: Quix

This project was implemented with the support of Next Generation EU, National Renewal Plan (NPO), and The Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

Partners: The Faculty of Education at Charles University