To help The Field Museum celebrate the thriving, modern cultures of today’s Native American communities, our team created an engaging interactive musical experience where visitors can collaborate with a young Native American artist as he tells his own story, and the story of his people. Through a compelling touch screen interactive, visitors interact with Frank Wain, a young Native American hip-hop artist who helps them create an original musical piece to download via email and share with social networks.
This touch screen interactive introduces visitors to curator and musician Frank Waln, a Native American musician who shares information about Lakota culture and musical traditions as he guides visitors through the process of creating their own personalized music track. Wain leads visitors through their music making, reviewing the three elements of their musical creation (rhythm, instruments, and vocals), and sharing personal stories about the history and importance of each instrument. Visitors experiment with the audio interface as they move through the visually rich interactive experience.
Once visitors are ready, they create and record their own customized music track incorporating up to seven musical elements (including bass, drum machine, cancega/Lakota drum, gourd shaker, flute, piano and vocals in English and Lakota), playing their own melodies from an on-screen keyboard.
Visitors then capture a 30-second audio clip of their musical creation and create a link to a website where they can download their clip and share it to social media. Throughout the engagement, Wain provides encouragement to the visitor and shares compelling information about Native American music and traditions, demonstrating Lakota instruments and sharing words and phrases in his native language.