Create an eerie symphony of sound with jelly

And here you were under the impression that jelly was just for eating. Well, in most cases it is, unless you hook it up to a fancy capacitive sensor and some other bits of hardware and software to make this wiggly snack sing.

A group of students at their last year at Les Ateliers French national institute for design have created what they call a “game” called ‘Noisy Jelly’, but it really isn’t a game per se–more of a fun reason to play with your food and make theremin-like noises.

The artist Marianne Cauvard is a food designer with a deep fascination for jellies, a material she describes as both “attractive and repelling.” Combining her food fascination with engineer Raphaël Pluvinage’s mind for virtual and physical systems, you can begin to piece together how this project came about.

The jelly is made up of water, agar agar powder (a semi-translucent gelatin), and food coloring. The “game board” is a capacitive sensor made up of a piece of wood laid over metal foil, which is hooked up to an Arduino board that is running #capcence lib, Max/Msp software, and Arduino2Max.

The sensors react to your electric touch based on the salt concentration where you touch the jelly, and how much pressure you use. The shape of the jelly also factors into the equation. The result (as seen in the video above) is a musical, almost eerie noise that emanates from nearby speakers at the mere touch of your finger. Touch more than one at a time and you have a bizarre symphony of sounds.

via PopSci

Source: http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/create-an-eerie-symphony-of-sound-with-jelly-20120331/

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