Body, Clothes, Water, and Toys: Media Towards Natural Music Expressions with Digital Sounds

Abstract: In this paper, we introduce our research challenges for creating new musical instruments using everyday-life media with intimate interfaces, such as the self-body, clothes, water and stuffed toys. Various sensor technologies including image processing and general touch sensitive devices are employed to exploit these interaction media. The focus of our effort is to provide user-friendly and enjoyable experiences for new music and sound performances. Multimodality of musical instruments is explored in each attempt. The degree of controllability in the performance and the richness of expressions are also discussed for each installation.