The Handbell Choir, one of the club activities at Tamagawa Gakuen, performs about 50 concerts a year. In the summer, students in grades 7 through 12 go on a performance tour to the Tohoku region, and also perform at senior citizen centers and kindergartens, mainly in the Kanto region.

Handbell performance is characterized not only by the sound, but also by the attractive appearance of the performers. The scale of the bells is fixed, so in other words, the notes can be seen. In collaboration with the students of Katsushika School for the Deaf, the “Future Earth School” is taking on the challenge of developing new ways to enjoy sound by taking advantage of these visually pleasing performance characteristics and utilizing science to “deliver the appeal of handbells beyond the auditory sense.

In the first phase of the project, during FY2021, we will test a method of enjoying handbell performance with auditory, tactile, and visual senses, receive feedback from students at Katsushika School for the Deaf, and study development issues for adjustment and completion in the second and subsequent phases. Ultimately, we will hold a music concert in which both hearing-impaired and non-hearing-impaired people can participate together.

Regarding the conversion of sound into tactile sensation, the children of Katsushika School for the Deaf are experimenting with a method to enjoy sound by converting it into vibration with the help of Mr. Honda, Ontenna project leader of Fujitsu Limited. For the conversion of sound into vision, we will develop a method to visualize and enjoy sound by programming with p5.js.

So far, we have just learned the basics of p5.js on how handbell playing can be visualized. Using the prototype program, we held a petit performance and listened to the feedback from the children at Katsushika School for the Deaf. We are waiting for a suitable time to hold a face-to-face performance, as we have only been able to hold an online concert in the Corona Disaster. The programmed video is still not strong enough with our current skills, and we were finally able to realize it with the cooperation of the teachers and students of Yamamoto Japanese Language School in Cambodia. We also learned the importance of not hesitating to ask for cooperation in order to deliver good products.