event
Synth Design Hackathon 2023

The Textural Music Box

A digital instrument for playing textural melody
Daisy seed microcontroller
Touch sensor
prompt
A sympathetic byte
category
Performance instrument
category
Performance instrument

Coaches & collaborators

institute
National Cheng Kung University, Tainan Taiwan
Textural Music Box is an environment-aware device with 12 independent sensory needles (tentacles) to scan the environment texture and convert it into music output. The sensory needles of the box can detect the contact of conductive surface and produce sound to create a continuous melody. This functionality is related to music box, the operator's free and haphazard movement of the tool allows for continual reading of the surface's irregular texture. And the tone of the acoustic output can also be adjusted by turning the knob. The device can produce non-repeating tunes because the entire performance process is dependent on the texture pattern of the surface and box’s movement path.
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the tech

How does it work?

The acoustic output of this device is triggered by sensing the electric field through the contact surface of the tentacles. The longitudinal surface undulation of the texture could be sampled with 12 independent sensory needles simultaneously. Through the sequential movement of the device, the acoustic outputs of each time point could be connected and assembled into a continuous melody. This device can only work on conductive surfaces, a layer of conductive material, such as aluminum foil or metal paint, must be placed to the surface if the surface to be read is non-conductive, such as bark or walls, for being able to be scanned.
Open source code
Click here to grab this project's code
Daisy seed microcontroller
A powerful microcontroller for synthesis programmed through C++, Arduino, Pure data and Max MSP
Touch sensor
A touch capacitance sensor can detect anything that is conductive
About the instrument
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