A Customizable Sensate Surface for Music Control Nan-Wei Gong Nan Zhao Joseph A. Paradiso MIT Media Lab MIT Media Lab MIT Media Lab 75 Amherst Street 75 Amherst Street 75 Amherst Street Cambridge MA 02142, USA Cambridge MA 02142, USA Cambridge MA 02142, USA
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT This project seeks to provide a customizable wireless music This paper describes a novel music control sensate surface, controller surface that can be easily adapted by musicians and which enables integration between any musical instruments seamlessly integrated with any existing music instrument. with a versatile, customizable, and essentially cost-effective Our goal is to create a skin-like sensate surface which allows user interface. This sensate surface is based on conductive users to build their desired controller without changing the inkjet printing technology which allows capacitive sensor geometry of their instruments. We believe that this approach is electrodes and connections between electronics components to an efficient and cost-effective method to create a user interface be printed onto a large roll of flexible substrate that is for music since our platform is highly adaptive and can be unrestricted in length. The high dynamic range capacitive custom-designed by users. sensing electrodes can not only infer touch, but near-range, To achieve this goal, we explore the use of a recently non-contact gestural nuance in a music performance. With this available technology, conductive inkjet printing, as an enabler sensate surface, users can “cut” out their desired shapes, for building low-cost sensate surfaces.