Making Music at Olin
The Electrical Acoustic Musical Instrument project (EAMI) is an Autodesk-sponsored project, developed by Ben Linder, a professor of Design and Mechanical Engineering at Olin College and MassArt professor James Reed.
Over the semester four teams of Olin and MassArt students are co-designing, prototyping, and testing experimental stringed instruments to support the democratization of music in low-resource contexts. The emphasis is on affordability, learnability, and playability.
Two teams are working on accessibility of cellos for public school students. The other two are designing a build-an-instrument program for youth in Coahoma County in the Mississippi Delta in collaboration with the ADE Community Development team.
On this day, noted cellist Ben Sollee and Associate Director of the D-Lab at MIT, Kofi Taha, joined the class to review early designs.