Rachel Ciavarella made this interesting project using, among other things, an arduino.
This experimental piece was designed to facilitate experimentation with music. The user is allowed to manipulate sounds through an interface that responds to changes with haptic feedback.
This is meant to make sound manipulation more familiar and less intimidating to “nonmusical” people. By pairing visual and tactile cues to sound qualities I hope to bring a new understanding to sound experience and experimentation.
To interact, a user first selects a sound using one of the buttons. As the sound plays, it can be distorted by turning any of the three haptic feedback distortion knobs.
Each knob produces a different type of distortion. The unique texture on each knobs looks and feels like the distortion sounds. Vibration motors nested inside the knobs are programed to provide a specific vibration pattern that maps a texture onto the knobs that also feels like the distortion sounds.
I was able to make this all happen using a midi controller, computer sound mixing program, an Arduino, processing, and some simple circuitry.
