For my paper nature project, my biggest inspiration was the wind moving through the leaves of trees around campus. I liked the idea of running one’s hands through the leaves of a tree to produce music.

My project will be a large paper tree, with each leaf hooked up to a MaKey MaKey board through a piece of copper tape. Touching a leaf will produce a unique pitch of wind chime. Brushing one’s hands through the leaves will produce the sound of many wind chimes clanging against each other. With some patience and memory, one could even produce a song by pressing individual leaves.

At the base of the tree are several mushrooms which can be used to change the background music which plays quietly behind the sound of the leaves.

I would also like to have an animation portion to the project, just a simple background on which leaves of different colors and sizes appear as one touches the tree.