Hello everyone, our work aims to enhance the influence of Guqin art
We developed two interactive systems to make
Guqin more accessible to the general public
Our team members come from Tianjin University,
Tsinghua University, Guyin Studio in China
and Dartmouth College in the USA
Guqin is a traditional Chinese musical instrument that exists for over 3,000 years,
and was included in the
"Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity"
by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization)
However, the inheritance of Guqin art has encountered greatest challenges
It's urgent to protect Guqin and its culture from distinction
There are seven strings and thirteen small marks-called "Hui" on the panel
Guqin has specific notation, called "Reduced Notation"
The character of reduced notation indicates how to perform,
but it doesn’t have rhythm identification,
nowadays it always be equipped with
the corresponding numbered musical notation or staff
We conducted a survey to understand the challenges
in promoting Guqin and its culture
1,006 Chinese participated
We ensured that all the provinces of China had been covered
In addition, we also recruited overseas Chinese
We investigated the problems that hindered the development of Guqin art
In order to overcome these challenges, we proposed two interactive systems
The first one is Virtual Guqin
It is designed for general public to solve the problem
that they have no chance to play Guqin,
Users can follow the symbols on the screen to perform Guqin music
in teaching mode or play their own rhythm in composing mode
The images captured by Kinect are displayed on the interface,
and a 3D Guqin model is generated in front of user
There is also a Guqin picture on the interface,
and the positions of hands are mapped to corresponding place on the Guqin picture
The interface of teaching mode is more complicated
A Reduced notation character
and its corresponding fingering instruction are also displayed
Reduced Notation has been translated into symbols easy to understand
Users just need to follow the instructions
of symbols by moving hands
We deployed VirGuqin system in Tianjin Museum
to verify its effectiveness
308 people were recruited to our experiment
All the participants experienced the composing mode
and teaching mode successively
Then, complete a questionnaire
The result showed that 89% of people thought
VirGuqin enhanced their interests in Guqin learning
It also achieved good result in ease of understand,
ease of use and joy
Mixed Reality Guqin, is designed for Guqin beginners to
ease the learning process and enhance their confidence
When user chooses a piece of Guqin music in our system,
the corresponding virtual scene is shown with a virtual desk
The real-time pictures will be mapped onto the surface of the desktop
Symbols translated from the reduced notation will be augmented,
and users can follow them to play Guqin
We setup MRGuqin in a Guqin school to conduct a user study
16 Guqin beginners were recruited to take part in this user study
The participants were divided into two groups
They were asked to learn two pieces of Guqin music
with the help of reduced notation and MRGuqin respectively
The results of both groups showed that participants with MRGuqin
learned faster than that learned with traditional method
Performance of the participants with MRGuqin
got higher average score than that learned with traditional method
All the participants thought the symbols were easy to understand
And most of participates thought it interesting and it
could enhance their learning confidence
In conclusion,
In this paper, we presented the challenges in the promotion of Guqin
And we proposed two systems which are proved to be effective
And we also demonstrated how interactive technology
can be used to help the inheritance of Guqin art
Thanks for your watching