As part of the work we've been doing with Sherlock Holmes and the Internet of Things, I'd like to propose a little game to you today (for more information about the global experiment in collaborative storytelling that I am participating in, visit this site: http://sherlockholmes.io/ )
Read the story below and then explore the virtual protoype of the connected violin that I made using Thinglink. Can you solve the crime with the clues you find? There is no right or wrong answer. There is just the fun of coming up with your own story based on these clues, either by yourself or with friends. Please do share your stories in the comments section!
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The Case of the Frivolous Flautist It has been days since you were first called to the scene where the body of Chloe Williams was found, and you are still no closer to discovering the truth. Your mind is filled with questions. What had she been doing in the Casino parking lot at 3AM? Why were there pink feathers scattered everywhere around her body? Why were all of the text messages on her phone wiped clean? Most importantly, why was there a violin found at the scene when everyone knows she was a flautist at the Las Vegas Philharmonic?
Frustrated you glare at the instrument in question, sitting there on your desk, and give one of its strings an angry flick of your finger. While the string is still vibrating, your phone chimes. You've received a virtual post card welcoming you to LA, with the following message: Like the great Sherlock Holmes, perhaps music will help you collect the puzzle pieces to solve this crime.
Finally a break! Chloe's colleague, the first violinist at the Las Vegas Philharmonic, gives you a crash course in violin fingering and helps you crack a secret code: Each time you play a note that corresponds to the letters of Chloe's name (in order), a new clue is revealed.
Now it's up to you. Go from the thrill of discovery as you uncover Chloe's secret life as a showgirl, to horror as you watch the final clue and realize it is a snuff movie. You finally have everything you need to reconstruct the crime and name the killer. What happened and who killed Chloe Williams?
Go HERE to play...
PS - I am migrating all of these posts over from my old blog. Someone had commented "I want to understand". Here was my reply:
"This came about because I was trying to think of how we could turn a violin into a connected object in the context of a detective story. I have to confess that at that point, I wasn't really sure what a connected object was! So I was trying to imagine how playing the violin could maybe trigger text messages, or e-mails, or links automatically opening, in order to send clues to the participant, who would play the role of the detective.
My husband is a composer. One of my favorite things that he does in concert is to ask audience members their first names. He then improvises a musical theme on the letters of their names, transformed into notes. This is done simply by taking a scale starting with "A" and superimposing the alphabet. The scale starts over again once you reach the octave, but the alphabet keeps going... (hence my little table above with the notes and the alphabet).
This led me to wondering whether the detective couldn't discover that playing the first name of the victim on the violin would trigger clues...
My prototype is not ideal. For one thing, it doesn't actually play the notes of the violin. But the idea is that by playing the notes of the victim's name in order, or in this case, by clicking on the corresponding string of the violin, a series of clues would appear (I'm not a violin player, so I may have got some of the fingering wrong!).
Then it's up to you, or whoever is playing the game, to invent their own story based on these clues and share it with others!"