Interactive Poster Produces Sound When Touched

Posters have been around for many years taking it many styles, from Toulouse-Lautrec's creations for the Moulin Rouge to the iconic designs for Hollywood movies, but recently Dutch graphic designers Trapped In Suburbia and David van Gemeren have given this humble format a digital update with their Sound Poster 1.0.

The title of the project is a bit of a giveaway as to what it does, namely it's a poster that produces sound when you run your hand over it. Inspired by Kandinsky and his ideas surrounding color and music, the piece is their attempt to merge digital with analog in a tactile experience, where print media meets digital technology.

Using Arduino connected to copper wire they've used conductive paint to create a kind of bizarre graphical instrument/avant-garde product. They explain how it works below:

When the resistance changes, the sound changes with [it]: soft touch gives a different sound than hard on the poster prints. The sound is now based on a synthesizer sound, we are now working on a sequel in which the sound is more based on real classical instruments.

Full of abstract images and cacophonous sounds, which are currently played through a plugged-in amp, it certainly won't be replacing the print poster just yet, but it'll be interesting to see how the project progresses.

Images courtesy of Trapped In Suburbia

@stewart23rd