PARTICIPATORY
Amazing to ‘see’ sound. Beautiful, uplifting experience.
I would give it 11 golden stars.
Play & See
Interactive sound and moving-image installation Play & See lets anyone step up to the piano to bring new worlds to life – no experience needed. Each note you play shapes a shifting scene: flocks of birds might take flight, trees might grow, you may soar through an infinite tunnel.
Whether you’re just tapping out a few notes or playing a full piece, this interactive installation transforms your exploration on a real piano into something vivid, unexpected, and alive.
Play & See premiered at Arnolfini Bristol . This short video shows what it’s all about:
We are currently planning tour dates for Play & See for the coming season. If you represent (or want to recommend) a venue or institution that would like to host, please get in touch !
A presentation of Play & See can also be paired with a one-off or a 2–4 week series of creative‑coding workshops (see below), where participants design their own interactive visual scenes. These can then be incorporated into a public presentation of Play & See within their local community.
Super rad – unpretentious & fun, everything art should be.
Mesmerising – made me a better musician. Made me able to play & improvise in a way I never have before.
Play & See: Hospital Edition
Play & See: Hospital Edition is a collaboration between Charlie Hooper-Williams, the Royal United Hospital (RUH) Bath and Francesca Simpkins, RUH Musician‑in‑Residence. The core music-visuals system is being adapted into a portable, plug‑and‑play hospital-safe unit for the RUH Children’s Ward, offering moments of distraction, self‑expression, and calm within a clinical environment.
Find Out More
For venues, hospitals, festivals, and partners interested in hosting or commissioning Play & See, a detailed information deck is available here :
Play & See is proud to acknowledge development support from The Studio Innovation Fund 2026:
Play & See began as a project originally supported by The MyWorld Open Challenge Call:
It has received further development support from Arts Council England and The Marchus Trust:
Creative Coding Workshops
Alongside performances, I run “Intro to Creative Coding” and “Creating Live Visuals for Music Performance” workshops where young people and adults can have a first taste of using free software to create live reactive visuals, without writing a line of code.
These workshops take a hands-on, dive-right-in approach. From the very beginning, participants learn by doing, making simple, visual, interactive scenes right away. Using the same software I use for my own live visuals, you’ll make things spin, glow, warp, and sparkle as you learn about rendering, lighting, textures and more.
Suitable for anyone comfortable with basic computer skills — no prior coding experience needed.
Participant Feedback:
Charlie was incredibly patient as he taught us the basics and was always willing to pause and help someone who needed extra help. It was also really impressive to be able to create an interactive sound design within such a short time. If there's another course I'll definitely sign up again!
What · Cross-disciplinary digital-making: live animations with shapes that spin, warp and pulse in response to music and sound. Students build a network of operators in a node-based environment — no code typing required. Working in pairs.
Who’s teaching · Charlie Hooper-Williams — award-winning composer, pianist, and one of the software developers of the global top-10 app Shazam.
Ages · 13–18 or University
Group size · Up to 16 per session
Length · 60–120 min
Subjects · Computing, Software Engineering, Animation, Music Technology, Mathematics, Design & Technology
Requirements · One computer per pair; free software pre-installed (instructions provided); demonstration screen/projector with HDMI.
Add-on · Can pair with a 20–60 min concert demonstration, including student work. No maximum audience size.
Charlie also writes about music, technology and the creative process on Substack .