Speaker is an interactive wire sculpting device that bends wire forms based on sound input. The user speaks into a small microphone on the device, which then starts to push and bend jewelry wire into a simplified sound wave contour based on his/her utterance. Sounds are thus physically ‘encoded’ into the wire, creating a tangible manifestation of an intangible sound.
An Arduino micro-controller is embedded in the device to calculate a simplified contour from the recorded sound wave. Two motors are used to push and bend the metal wire into shape.
The device explores the immediacy of the fabrication process by linking an ephemeral passage of sound to a physical entity. It furthermore acts as a means for the spoken word to be transcribed into an artifact of meaning.
A pair of earrings made by SpeakerWire with the words ‘I love you’.
Early design and prototype. Speaker was put together with hardboard, Lego wheels, and magnet wires.
Speaker is one of our projects that explore interfaces and devices that take real-time input to fabricate physical form. Read more on InteractiveFabrication.com .
Press
Exhibited in ACM SIGCHI TEI in Funchal, Portugal, 2011
Maker Faire New York 2010
Covered by newScientis
BBC Click radio program and Technology News.
Published in Interactive fabrication: new interfaces for digital fabrication at TEI 2011
What’s next?
We are working on an exciting program where you can make an object with your voice, save it and make it real with a 3D printer!
Work in progress: a processing program that takes voice input, and exports stl model of 3D shape informed by the sound
Collaboration with Karl D.D. Willis.
