Piyola(2009)

Piyola, a one octave usb keyboard, was a recycling project. Keys, which were salvaged from a 5 octave keyboard rescued from the garbage, are wired to a usb gamepad which is also found in a trash can. Case is made from extra cheap wood but it is very sturdy. When I find enough thrown away gamepads and make four more with the remaining parts of the donor keyboard, all will be donated to a local organization.

Build Pictures

Wiitar(2007)

As its not so original name suggests, this is a solid body electric guitar with the internals of a nintendo wiimote inside. Five switches on the guitar are wired to the button contacts on the wiimote and their state, coupled with 3 axis accelerometer data, are sent to a computer via bluetooth. On the receiving side, a great little program, Glove Pie (thanks to Carl Kenner), handles the incoming data and sends it to any compatible platform thru osc (in my case, mostly Pure Data).

Having an accelerometer on a guitar brings endless possibilities like : tilting the guitar for effect parameter changes, gesture recognition for switching things ( for example, jumping two times triggers a preset change.), data logging for estimating the performers position on the stage, etc. It is very easy to get lost in this sea of possibilities.As a part of my design philosophy, I try to capture and use the already present movements of the performer rather than forcing the performer to learn and move in a required way.

For example, one of my implementations includes using the body movements of the performer to attract the wavetable of a scanned synthesis engine, allowing the player's moves to be the actual timbre. In an other implementation, incoming data is used to control the parameters of a real time generated backing track, allowing the virtual band to communicate with the performer in a more humanly way.

As a little bonus, the vibration motor of the wiimote is left in the electronic cavity of the pictured prototype, both for experimental effects and mocking friends. A build log, router templates, and example code&patches will be here in the next possible moment.

Build Log & Pictures   Sample GlovePie Script   Sample PureData Patch

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