Studio Description

Studio Description

Andrew Todd Marcus and Kate Reed

Adaptive Musical Prosthetics will introduce you to the world of adaptive design for musicians. Adaptive Design seeks to ensure that people with disabilities receive the custom adaptations they need to fulfill their developmental, social, academic, and vocational potential. In the case of design for musicians, this includes enabling those with a range of extraordinary needs the opportunity to play the instruments of their choice. This studio grew out of discussions with Brooklin, a young violinist from Utah who expressed a desire for a more dynamic bow prosthesis. Students will choose an instrument and create an adaptive prosthesis to enable musicians with specific needs to access the instrument, either through the modification and improvement of existing solution or through a completely new design. This will be a challenging, though rewarding, studio in which we will seek to match prosthesis to real musicians and, through 3D modeling and fabrication, generate open-sourced designs for dissemination. This is the first studio of the NuVu Lab for Assistive Technology, a research initiative to develop technology and design solution for a variety of humanistic needs.