This paper presents a study on the composition of haptic music for a multisensory installation and how composers could be aided by a preparatory workshop focusing on the perception of whole-body vibrations prior to such a composition task. Five students from a Master’s program in Music Production were asked to create haptic music for the installation Sound Forest. The students were exposed to a set of different sounds producing whole-body vibrations through a wooden platform and asked to describe perceived sensations for respective sound. Results suggested that the workshop helped the composers successfully complete the composition task and that awareness of haptic possibilities of the multisensory installation could be improved through training. Moreover, the sounds used as stimuli provided a relatively wide range of perceived sensations, ranging from pleasant to unpleasant. Considerable intra-subject differences motivate future large-scale studies on the perception of whole-body vibrations in artistic music practice.

QC 20201022