By Dave Mainella
Electronic music composer Jeff Bryant found a way to play the piano with a scarf. By weaving conductive silver thread into yarn and attaching tiny wireless radios, Bryant was able to manipulate the fiber and harness the voltage produced by twisting and turning the scarf.
“The conductive thread, used with regular yarn, makes a big, stretchy variable resistor,” Bryant explains. “If it’s twisted, pulled or compressed, more of the conductive thread is touching itself and that distortion affects the amount of voltage that we can read.”
He then programmed a score-generator to convert the wireless voltage signal into musical notation, which then in turn activated an antique Vorsetzer device that powered the player piano.
Bryant’s “push_push” interactive performance showcases the technology, with a dancer manipulating the MIDI scarf.
You can read more at here, and a demo performance can be seen below…
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