The voices of the Summit Singers will be seen as colors, shapes and lights thanks to a collaboration between the a cappella group and engineering students.

Behind the collaboration is engineering professor AnnMarie Thomas and five students in her Playful Learning Lab, a group that connects students with projects outside of the classroom. Their goal is to create a musical and visual demonstration for the Minnesota Science Museum Annual Dinner on Oct. 27.

They will use a software developed by a team of students under Thomas’ guidance called Code and Chords, which will take live music input and turn it into real-time visuals. And rather than one picture, each voice is driving a light, or a star or a color bar.

Junior Emily Meuer, a computer science major and member the project, said the name of the software is particularly fitting.

“There are a lot of codes that go with it, and chords is a pun; all of the cords I have sitting in my room, and of course the musical chords they make with their sounds,” Meuer said.

Last spring, Cantus, a professional men’s choir, contacted Thomas’ Playful Learning Lab asking if they could work with them on ways to add technology to their 2017-2018 tour. The Playful Learning Lab originally started creating a software incorporating visuals designed for Cantus’ upcoming tour. The visuals were created to not only go along with the music, but are created by the music.

“The Science Museum asked us to perform and do a demonstration of the science behind it at their annual dinner,” Thomas said. “Cantus is touring, so we thought it would be a great opportunity to ask the Summit Singers.”

The current code being used for the software is made to work with men’s voices, so using a men’s a cappella group requires less editing for the demonstration.

“They gave us a chance to look at the software and have fun with it, it was like playing in a toy store,” Summit Singers President Alex Noto said.

At the Science Museum dinner, the students behind the project will talk about the technology, and the Summit Singers will sing three pieces of music to demonstrate it.

This will be the first collaboration the Summit Singers have done with another club or department, and Noto added he’s excited to sing somewhere new.

“We will be performing in an event where we have typically not performed in. It is kind of unpreceded and that is my favorite part,” Noto said.

Visually, the show is going to be similar to Cantus’ show, but the difference will be in the voices and working with a new men’s a cappella group.

The Summit Singers and the Playful Learning Lab are hoping to build a strong working relationship. Both groups are hopeful at the idea of future collaborations.

“My favorite part about working with the Summit Singers is the energy. We came in and said, ‘Here is this. Here is what we have,’ and they were so excited. This whole process has been exciting,” Meurer said.

Lydia Lockwood can be reached at lock0052@stthomas.edu