BB5Y LENS July 2019 Vol 5: Issue No. Fifty nine Excellence Through Partnership
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88 Pianists Top inventions
PLAY IT AGAIN To mark 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci’s death, a group of Universities asked: has the smartphone killed invention? To find out, they wanted primary school children across the UK to invent their way to an unbreakable world record for the number of people playing the same piano. Da Vinci was a renowned inventor, engineer and artist. He even invented his own musical instrument, the Viola Organista.
Abbey was up for the challenge!
In an ever-more digital world, could we still invent and make something physical and unexpected? Could we fuse engineering and art? The world-record currently stands at 19 people playing the same piano, but if we could invent mechanical finger-extenders, we could have one person on each note: 88 Pianists! We took part in a competition across the whole of the UK to design these mechanical fingers. Hearing about da Vinci and other inventors, and learning how a piano works, the children created a total of 2500 designs from which our final 88 were chosen. They are working together with our Engineering Teams to build them into real life mechanical extendable fingers, before bringing the fingers to Birmingham, teaching young West Midlands piano students how to use them, and watching as Julian Lloyd Webber conducts a newly commissioned piece to break the world record on 19 August 2019.
Abbey had five designs chosen to make it to the world record breaking attempt.
http://www.88pianists.com/88-inventions
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