an instrument for the sonification of everyday things

By sarahendren

Mar 28, 2013

You might think of this project as a poetics of sensory substitution: swapping one capacity for another. There are a number of tools in development now that translate visual material into audible “colors,” or use tactile signals to “see” the environment—they create an artificial form of synaesthesia that’s meant to compensate for lost function in one or another bodily sense.

Dennis Paul’s Instrument for the Sonification of Everyday Things externalizes the shape of multiple objects—in sound waves.  Like a morphological record player:

A crumpled piece of newspaper is sandwiched and suspended between two tabletop "vice grip" structures, capable of spinning the object laterally, like a rotisserie. A small squarish tool below the paper scans its surfaces and translates them into sounds.

The same instrument, holding a plastic face-sized clown mask.

the same instrument, holding a large pair of headphones.

Screenshot of the program's workings, showing translated graphic sound waves based on the surface qualities of the suspended object.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/49484255 w=500&h=281]

An Instrument for the Sonification of Everday Things from Dennis P Paul on Vimeo.

via @gabswolf.