DRUMBALL: Multimodal Meaning Production through Digital Drum Talk

In this demonstration, I present an interactive prototype of the Drumball system, an embodied learning environment that allows for drum patterns to be turned into and used as letters, words or phrases. The system acts as a transducer of rhythmic input into multimodal output, and was designed to investigate the affordances of this embodied learning approach on the early literacy skills acquisition of children. The project follows a design thinking process (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) to explore cultural systems as a grounding for learning technologies design. The session provides a space to think beyond the traditional keypad interface and its reliance on alphabetic input, to explore how the application of the talking drum cultural system in the domain of human-computer interaction can be used to transform children's early experiences with literacy. I will demonstrate creating sequences of letters and words using the system by playing drum tones of varying pitches (tone, slap and bass).