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Music

New Haptic Instrument Uses Touch And Sound To Create Intense Graphics

The mind reels at what a band like Animal Collective could do with this device.
Images via Maistudio

Last week we dived again into the bizarre mind of GayBird, an avant-garde musician who designs instruments such as touch-sensitive iPad masks, and theremin-meets-space harp type machines that emit sounds as unique as they look.

Today we bring you Yemas, an instrument that could undoubtedly fit into the arsenal of GayBird, as it implements a haptic interface to release electronic notes (bleeps, bloops, you name it), alongside visual effects.

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Designed by Daniel Gomez of Maistudio with Jose Moncada, Daniela Issa Echeverry, and Mauritius, Yemas is a drum-like instrument--though it looks like the lovechild of a bongo and trampoline--that has built in computer applications such as PureData and OpenFrameworks so that touch correlates with sound.

The instrument is also accompanied by interactive visuals, designed by artist Miguel Ceballos, that respond to the gestures and sound environments created while Yemas is used live.

The team cites experimental musician and composition professor Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum as inspiration for the device, which is admittedly very similar. Whereas Oliver used his machine to create experimental noise, Maistudio seems to be using their incarnation to yield more digestible music structures.

We recently wrote about Evan Boehm's installation

"Looking At A Horse"

that used OpenFrameworks and facial recognition software to make a CGI horse appear more detailed as a bigger group was watching it. This isn't dissimilar from Ceballos' interactive visuals that accompany Yemas.

Imagine if Boehm and Ceballos collaborated to make a live performance where the visual elements responded to both the musician touching the Yemas instrument and the size of the crowd watching the instrument being played? In this hypothetical development, two elements, community size and physical interaction, could inspire a color-fried projection to be experienced alongside the fattest electronic beats.

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Regardless, this instrument could be used to spotlight the hyper-specific kinetic nuances of drum masters--your Questloves, your Dave Grohls, your Panda Bears. Their expert touches could perhaps yield the most sensitive sounds.

Now our minds are reeling as we imagine what type of visuals would appear if a band like Animal Collective used this tool while Yemas was connected to Ceballos' interactive visuals. Or if The Dirty Projectors used it. Or Flying Lotus. Or….

@zachsokol