This Ingenuity Festival competition was modeled on so-called "hackathon" contests across the country, where developers vie to create an innovative piece of software. As one of the judges for the Cleveland event, Rock Hall CEO Greg Harris noted that digital technology is omnipresent in the music business.
GREG HARRIS: There's a lot of layers to that --- technology in the creation of the music, technology in how we all consume music, and technology in how we all talk about it and share it with each other.
DCB: And the competitors came up with ideas in all of those areas, from a "rap app" that allowed users to create and share their own hip hop beats, to an air guitar program for Jimi Hendrix & Johnny Cash wannabes. The winner was Zach Zukowski of Eastlake who created an app that lets a user create new compositions from sampled video and sound from popular musicians. For this demonstration, he sampled himself.
ZACK ZUKOWSKI: I recorded video and sound of every possible combination on my drum kit. I would be able to do the same thing for all the notes on a bass and then store all of those, and then, when the user goes to compose, they would get the virtual performance.
As the winner, Zukowski won a six-month membership in the Launch House --- a tech incubator in Shaker Heights, where he will try to refine his creation in hopes of making it marketable.
