SoundFORMS

What if you could touch sound?

SoundFORMS is a sound synthesizer (generator) and sequencer (organizer) that allows users to interact with a physical representation of a sound wave in real time.

Concept

Program sound sequences
Visualize sequence pulses
Modify synthesized sounds by touching the wave

3D models

The CooperFORM row pins closest to the user act as buttons that trigger sound waves and drum beats. The user hears the sounds and sees the wave forms in real time.

User can create waveforms and manipulate them with the predefined hand gesture vocabulary.

Technical Overview

Our system is built on top of the existing inFORM CooperFORM, a square dynamic shape display. We use the Javascript interface developed by Xiao Xiao, et al, to write code for the synthesizer. We used the web audio API to generate the different synth sounds and drumbeats.
3 Waveform options: A user can manipulate the waves on a shape display using predefined gestures to switch among a sine wave, sawtooth wave, and square wave.

GIF showing different wave patterns
Preset drumbeats: soundFORM comes pre-configured with 9 different drumbeat patterns from which a user can choose.

GIF showing waves and drumbeats