Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Composing the Museum looks at how the unique and culturally significant Grainger Museum instrument collection was digitised through a process of creative engagement. In bringing together contemporary sound making practices, digital instrument design and innovative curatorial approaches, digital Grainger instruments were created. These digital instruments, along with original artefact and new works composed with the digital instruments formed part of the highly interactive 2019/2020 Grainger Museum exhibition How it plays: Innovations in percussion. The Grainger Museum collection at the University of Melbourne, houses a dazzling array of historical artefacts of iconic Australian composer, pianist, and inventor Percy Grainger. This includes Grainger’s unique tuned-percussion instruments that can be displayed, but no longer played due to their age and fragility. Composing the Museum will look at the Living Instruments project at the Grainger Museum and how the project collaboratively engaged Interactive Composition music students, Information Technology students, and Animators with the Grainger percussion collection. The project acts as a possible model for teaching, learning, and collaboration in ways technology, creative arts practice, software design, and museum science can coalesce effectively. The Living Instruments project digitally preserves the sound of the fragile Grainger instrument collection and importantly presents a way of transforming the relationship between musical artefacts/objects and their cultural value with a diverse group of people including contemporary makers. In Composing the Museum, creativity and the making of new work are situated as centrally important to linking the past, present, and future of museum collections.