Cache-Noisette: A musical escape game

Created in 2020 by the organization Médiateurs et Médiatrices de la musique du Québec (MéMuQ), “Cache-Noisette” is a music mediation device designed as an escape game. It is played as a team using a deck of cards, musical scores, and interactive online support. This game offers a cooperative scenario immersed in the world of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. You have a limited time to solve puzzles and complete your mission: help Marie Clara, the Maestra of the orchestra, find the celesta player in time for the start of the show!

“Cache-Noisette” aims to introduce participants to Western musical notation and to deepen their knowledge of the world of the symphony orchestra while soliciting, in a fun way, their logical reasoning and their ability to communicate together. The first part of the workshop will allow participants to experience the game and the second part will be an opportunity to reflect collectively on the following questions: in what ways does this musical escape game act as a mediation device music? What possibilities or limits does the co-presence (in the same device) of physical textual supports (maps, scores) and an interactive digital support present for the mediation of music?

Biography

Marc-Antoine Boutin is co-founder and currently vice-president of Quebec Music Mediators (memuq.org). In 2021-2022, Marc-Antoine worked as a mediator on a project to integrate mediation into the curriculum of music students at Cégep de Saint-Laurent. Within the partnership study on the mediation of music, he produced the series of podcasts “Les Ateliers de l’EPMM”. At ARTENSO, Marc-Antoine Boutin and his colleague Maëli Saidi have designed a circus arts mediation guide for En Piste, a national circus arts group (Canada). In parallel with cultural mediation, Marc-Antoine is completing a doctorate in musicology under the co-direction of Michel Duchesneau and Hyacinthe Ravet. His thesis project focuses on the processes of musical creation in the circus.