In a whimsical proof of concept, artist and inventor Dan Wilcox harnesses the depth-sensing powers of the Kinect camera to turn a room full of drifting balloons into music. It occurs to me that the basic spatial model can be seen as descended directly from the Theremin – way to go, Leon, still relevant today. The sounds are simple, but it seems something you could continue to develop musically – to say nothing of what it could do for the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese’s. (Slogan: Where a Kid Can Be a Kid Who Gets Obsessed With Skeeball Prizes / Get Scared Out of a Kid’s Mind By the Other Kids in the Ball Pit. Sorry, it’s an American suburban thing of a certain age, for the more than half of you who have no idea what I’m talking about.)
Full description from Dan:
Experiments in balloon motion and sound using an MS Kinect depth sensing camera.
Created for the Carnegie Mellon 1st & 2nd year MFA Graduate show entitled “Fresh Baked Goods” at Bakery Square, April 2011.
A machine stands in a room surrounded by balloons. Circulating fans blow the balloons over the machine which creates sound based on their movements.
Mode 1: Tones
Balloon height and x/y position control the pitch and panning of a treble and bass voice. The tones can be quantized into a certain key or a glisssando can be employed for a theremin-style effect.
Mode 2: 99 Luftballons
The playback speed of Nena’s 99 Luftballons is controlled by balloon height. The balloons must be kept in the air for the song to play. Feed the machine.
Built using Open Frameworks, ofxKinect, and Open CV for balloon tracking and Pure Data for sound generation/playback.
See danomatika.com/blog/balloon-project for more info.
Dan has a master plan with a robotic music-playing suit and other ideas, so I can’t wait to see where this goes.