The Novalia Drum Poster

By Dana Sedgwick

I never really understood Tofurky… I like turkey. I like tofu. Tofu is fine the way it is… it’s not turkey. If you don’t want to eat meat… why would you eat fake meat? It all seems so illogical.

This is kind of how I feel about a Kickstarter project called the Novalia Drum Poster. The kickstarter describes it as: It’s a poster, with smart-phone-like capacitive touch. Touch the poster and hear the drums; it’s that simple. By touching or tapping the poster you can play along with your favorite tunes and add beats and rolls to any of your existing songs. Using printed touch technology you can play a 7 piece kit anywhere with just your fingertips.

And yes, it is fascinating when inanimate objects can somehow brilliantly escape the confines of their physical shells and become something entirely different. Like the Office Turntable by Kontor Records, which is not only magical in it’s transformation of nostalgia into futurism, it is incredibly useful as well. This is would be like if tofu literally could transform into turkey. Protein alchemy.

My issue with the Novalia Drum Poster is that it attempts this transformation and falls short. Does it make the band poster better? Does a singing birthday card really say more than a hand written message?

The band or show poster has long been in our hearts and on our bedroom walls. Even in today’s digital world, these images line nearly every street in NYC – covering and recovering construction’s plywood walls. And over the years, so much effort has been taken to turn these “uninteresting” visual squares into Harry Potter-esque, lifelike pieces of information that know when you walk by, connect with you, reach out and suggest something.

The QR attempted this… I believe we can call that a flop. Google Glass might actually achieve it. But regardless, success would only be real if like the Office Turntable, someone could take the poster and transform it into a completely new vessel of information.

I don’t mean to hate. The Drum Poster isn’t trying to change the world… hey, it could be a fun merch option for bands if they can figure out a way to trigger entire pieces of song or easily incorporate personal messages.

But the band poster is a little like tofu – a bit bland, a bit old school, a bit hipster – and maybe it’s better staying the way it is.