Tactile Orchestra

Today

Rockefeller Center. While everyone there seems to be in a rush, someone pauses, to place their hands on a large, soft surface.

They stroke the fabric, slowly, to invite sound from the exact place where their fingers meet the material. They look up. Someone standing next to them has been doing the same thing, listening to the same quiet experiment. And for a moment, without a word, without an introduction, they start making something together.

That moment is what Tactile Orchestra is designed for; the moment between strangers when they realise they are already collaborating.

Embodied Immersive Experience

Tactile Orchestra is what we call an Embodied Immersive Experience; including the body as an instrument to make an experience immersive, creates connection.

Tactile Orchestra is an installation consisting of a large, fur like surface. When you stroke it, it produces sound. Different areas, pressures, movements through the texture produce different frequencies, creating a layered soundscape that shifts with each touch. Everyone who reaches toward it becomes a player, organically an orchestra of strangers is formed.

The installation has been part of re’SOUND, the landmark exhibition by Korean digital design studio d’strict at HERO, Rockefeller Center’s immersive art space, since September 2025. It will still be on display until September 2026. Thousands of people have paused, hesitated, reached toward it, and stayed longer than they planned.

Wonder

We always start our work from a place of wonder.

The research behind Tactile Orchestra moved between two territories that rarely speak to each other. Music is mostly applied in a linear way, a temporal experience, intangible. Textiles are made to be touched and felt. The studio asked what would happen if those two languages were brought together. What if a textile could make you listen? What if music could be experienced spatially, and you could move back and forth through its layers the way you might explore a landscape with your hands?

These material questions opened into social ones. How do we invite connection, create something with someone we don’t know? When do you lead, and when do you withdraw to make room for what the person beside you is discovering? When does participation become co-creation, and when does co-creation become something close to conversation?

These questions sit at the heart of the work. The fabric as an instrument, the interaction between strangers who find themselves playing it together is the composition.

Creation

Tactile Orchestra is a very special work as it was the start of Fillip Studios. Thought up on their very first date, this project became our founders first collaboration.

Making Tactile Orchestra brought together the full range of disciplines and design process that define Fillip Studios. Wonder as a starting point, artistic research and concept shaped the central question.

Sound design shaped how the material would speak; which frequencies to embed, how it would respond to the difference between a careful stroke and a hurried one would translate into something the ear could follow. It became a system to bring together the different sounds, and transform them into an unpredictable and unique composition.The composition built for this version consists of eight parts, invisibly distributed across locations on the surface. Each part is on its own surprising, playful and engaging, together they form a layered musical piece that shifts with every touch.

Many experimental sessions were spent exploring how sound can invite wonder and interaction. The starting point was a series of piano improvisations shaped by questions about connection and curiosity. From those sessions, fragments were developed and divided among instrument groups. A palette of real instruments selected, their tones occasionally blurred or distorted, creating moments of subtle strangeness. The result is a composition that feels both familiar and elusive, and changes with every encounter.

Creative technology made the connection between touch and sound precise enough to feel intentional, responsive enough to reward curiosity. We chose the fabric based on its ability to show traces of touch, the tracks made by previous visitors show that touching is encouraged. The length of its fibres invites visitors to let their hands disappear and wander, finding the next sound hidden under the surface.

The shape of the surface was designed with the same intention, by adding a small shift in form the threshold of interaction was lowered. Curves were introduced so that visitors would not only watch from a distance, but felt comfortable to let themselves stand between and within the work.

Making the version of Tactile Orchestra for Rockefeller Center meant creating in a different country, with different materials, in a different making culture. Finding a shared language with a co-production partner required a different creation process than the usual scope of a project. Where a specific textile was unavailable, alternatives were sourced through Korean suppliers and tested until the same quality of touch was achieved. The technical system was improved and rebuilt, tested at small scale in the studio, and seen at full scale for the first time in Korea.

Every step of the process, driven by the combination of different disciplines, contributed and enriched. The result is a work where the design is serving the experience.

Presence

What Tactile Orchestra consistently produces is a particular quality of attention and an invitation to pause and connect. At first connect with their own senses, then the other. People approach the surface with a curiosity that is almost exploratory, drawn toward something they haven’t fully understood yet. The first touch is tentative, the second more deliberate, the third already a conversation. Instantly the space between people changes.

The work dissolves the threshold for interaction through material and sound. In a world where loneliness and mental health are big societal challenges, different, less intimidating approaches towards human connection are essential.

Passers-by touch the fabric, listen, noticing that the stranger beside them has been doing the same. A moment of shared discovery between people who have never met, who without deciding to, are now creating something together. Even at Rockefeller Center, one of the most transactional places on earth, people slow down to connect.

This is by design. The work carries a consistent and serious proposition: that connection between people does not require a common language, a shared history, or a formal invitation. It requires being in the same space and the willingness to listen.

Fillip Studios

Tactile Orchestra is what we call an Embodied Immersive Experience, sensorial immersion that brings connection. The body is the primary source of understanding, before language, and thought. What the work demonstrates in a subtle way, is that the deepest forms of interaction and connection are already available to people.

This is an important driver for Fillip Studios; real understanding lives in the body. When people feel a story rather than read it or hear it described, something shifts that no screen or presentation can replicate. Tactile Orchestra is one proof of that. The visitors at Rockefeller Center, reaching toward a soft surface and discovering they are already part of something together, are another.

Fillip Studios believes in Impact through Wonder. As an interdisciplinary team of artists, designers and engineers, we design Embodied Immersive Experiences that turn complex stories into meaningful connections. We work with cultural pioneers and visionary brands, translating their most ambitious ideas into interactive, sensory experiences that invite people to reflect, connect and see the world differently. Our work, ranging from museum exhibitions to interactive brand experiences, can be seen worldwide and always strives to make a positive contribution to society.

Welcome to Fillip Studios

Tactile Orchestra is on display at Rockefeller Center until late 2026, as part of re’SOUND by d’strict at HERO.

The work is available for exhibiting. If you program spaces or events where this conversation belongs, we would like to hear from you.