By Keith Nelson Jr.
What was the last sound you saw walking down the street? No need to reread, London-based design research lab, Stromatolite will make you rethink sound and color with their mobile app, Synaesthesia. The app allows you to produce and manipulate sounds from your phone by simply placing it in front of a color (i.e.: your friend’s red shirt). Available on both Android and iOS devices, Synaesthesia presents a pragmatic innovation to mobile music.
Created at a Stromatolite Music Tech Fest event, the innovative group designed Synaesthesia with a scale of colors (identical to its Music Tech Fest brand colors) associated with certain sounds. Synaesthesia allows you to scan a color for a sound, touch the screen to lock the sound to a loop, and repeat that loop at the speed of you shaking your phone. Additionally, you can augment the pitch of the sound by tilting your phone.
While the specifications say it requires Android. 2.2 and up, however Google Play said it was not compatible with the Samsung Admire (running Android 2.3) I used in my initial attempt. The HTC EVO 4G was compatible and the user experience was impressively similar to the advertisement. The responsiveness of the changing of the phone orientation during pitch shifting was particularly exceptional displaying little to no delay. At times the app crashed while shaking and the time it takes to locate a sound varied quite noticeably with each attempt. Synaesthesia is still in the beta stage and Stromatolite admits they are still thinking of new ways of development so these minor defects will probably be remedied.
Stromatolite created the Synaesthesia app to enjoyably connect consumers with music through everyday technology. Synaesthesia could find additional development inspiration from fellow sound manipulation apps such as the mobile version of FL Studio. Expanding users’ range of control with an increased sound library and the ability to arrange multiple sounds to create unique compositions would turn Synaesthesia into a beat making machine for the people and by the people. Imagine waving your phone in front of five people’s shirts, tapping it with your finger for about 30 seconds to arrange and then shaking out a beat.
Check below for a demonstration video of Synaesthesia from Stromatolite’s Music Tech Fest’s official Youtube page:
Stay colorful, people.
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