May 16, 2008
Suitcases That Produce Beats
Earlier this week we wrote about how David Byrne is turning a building into an instrument; along a similar vein, Angel Olivares & Matthew Young have found a way to create music from suitcases.
The clickedy clack of wheels catching the cracks in sidewalks inspired the two designers to develop unique surfaces that produced music when wheeled bags are dragged over it.
Similar in concept to Nintendo’s Excitebike, the racing game that allowed players to customize racetracks with different ramps, the design team has created custom surfaces with various bumps and textures carefully spaced out. When the wheels hit the bumps, they create beats that are picked up by contact microphones and run through Max/MSP programmable audio software to generate beats.
They plan to install these surfaces in airports, bus stations, and other travel destinations. They even hope to create multiple surfaces and instal them next to each other to allow multiple bags to play more complex melodies and rhythms.
[via Make]
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