To add effects, the user runs the end of the wand across a texture — for example, a dish of glass marbles. A sensor at the tip feels and measures the stimulation and sends the signal to a computer.
Specialized software that builds on original work by Roberto Aimi, an MIT alum who invented hybrid digital instruments, merges the recorded sound of the car engine with the marbles. The result sounds like a car engine tinkling through glass marbles.
"It reflects a natural and intuitive way of thinking about sound," said Michael Gurevich, a post-doctoral research scholar at Stanford University specializing in physical interaction design for music. "You are taking a thing and going out in the world and probing it and tapping it the way you would a drum stick," he said.
The challenge, he said, is making the device — meant for rubbing and scraping — robust enough.
"I like to talk about the kindergarten test. If you give the wand to a six-year old, how long is it going to last?" he asked.
Merrill and Raffle will be testing the device's robustness at this years SIGGRAPH conference in August, where they expect thousands of attendants to scrape, rub, brush and tap the Sound of Touch to its limit.
