By Tracy Staedter, Discovery News
-pitcure:The String Thing – The digital instrument replaces computer keyboard finger-tapping with a cello-like interface, bringing high-tech musicians out from behind their screens.
July 13, 2005— A new kind of digital instrument replaces computer keyboard finger-tapping with a cello-like interface, bringing high-tech musicians out from behind their glowing screens.
The “String Thing” was designed by Interaction Design Institute Ivrea student Benjamin Dove. He hopes that light displays from its lasers, and the unusual sounds it produces, will give audiences richer experiences.
“It’s something that makes sense from everyone’s point of view,” said Dove, who used to play the cello.
The computer interface is an adjustable, hollow device affixed to four thin metal tubes divided by a bridge into long and short sections.
By positioning the fingers on the long section, a player can control pitch; by positioning the other hand’s fingers on the short section, the player can control such things as tempo and volume.
Four laser pointers shining down the length of each rod relay the plucking motion to a tiny Web camera located on the bridge. When the player presses on the rods, the finger splits the beam of light, reflecting a splotch of light back to the camera.
Video processing software written by Dove, and located on an external computer, reads the dots of reflected light and essentially converts them into notes.
A magnetic field generated under each metal rod by an electromagnet helps to produce sensory feedback. When the player presses the rod, the metal comes into contact with the magnetic field, causing the rod to vibrate. More pressure causes more vibration, giving the player the sensation of strumming a stringed instrument.
Toggle switches at the bottom of the String Thing control different tuning modes and the volume for each rod.
“This is one of those projects that legitimately crosses the line from design to artwork,” said Nathan Shedroff, a Web site consultant in San Francisco and a member of the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea’s advisory board. “This is a piece of art that is made for producing art.”
The next step, according to Shedroff, is to get the instrument into the hands of open-minded musicians to both evaluate it and to see what they can do to help alter computer-based music.