Bompas & Parr

Generative audio and a synthesiser made from cheese

picture of two men listening to sound coming from plants and a bathtub — Tangible musical interface for Sony Sonic Wonderland with green plants as the input, using capacitive touch to generate sine wave audio output directly on an Arduino.

Bompass & Parr are a London based studio producing “flavour-based experience design” projects I was their freelance creative technologist helping them delivery several of their projects focused on interacting with everyday objects, food and plants – often triggering sound and light reactions. Projects included a tangible musical instrument made from real plants for the Sonic Wonderland Experience; a musical synthesizer made from sausages and cheese for a film; and an interactive fruit display to explore a future vision for retail that balances the garden with the field, and making the lighting at the top of The Shard London react to touch.

Photograph of a skyscrapper in london at night with colourful lights and a winter cave with two women sitting — I developed two capactive-touch based installations for an public space on the 72nd floor of The Shard London. One controlled audio in the space, while the other triggered different lighting sequences via MIDI.

My role involved a period of technical feasibility and discovery, rapid prototyping and documentation, then develping and installing the final output on-site. I always enjoy blending creative technology and experience design, to find the best technical solution to achieve the ideal experience. I used various Arduino versions for these projects and developed a custom pcb that allowed capacative touch sensors to function as a MIDI keyboard. Triggering audio to play in Processing, on custom mp3 devices, OSC lighting setups and even Ableton Live.

Photograph of strawberries and cheese connected to a mac laptop with colourful cables — I created a food-based synthesiser converting touch gestures into sound. I used an Arduino with custom capacative touch electronics as a midi controller to trigger audio in Ableton Live.

Related work

Science Museum London