The sound of painting At Siggraph next month David Merrill of MIT's Media Lab will demonstrate "The sound of touch", a new instrument for real-time capture and sensitive physical stimulation of sound samples using digital convolution.	Nic Mokhoff Research Editor
The Sound of Touch, part of the Emerging Technologies venue at Siggraph enables people to manipulate sound samples by adopting characteristics of acoustic instruments, making samples that are recorded on-the-spot malleable and flexible through continuous gestural interaction with physical textures and resonant objects. The Sound of Touch builds on a technique for continuous digital convolution. A stand-alone wand incorporates both a microphone for recording samples and a piezoelectric sensor for stimulating the samples. A "texture kit" enables sonic experimentation with a wide range of physical textures and resonant objects. Merrill claims that in the next 10 years a generation of musicians could adopt this system as their preferred synthesis technique. Ultimately, the system could become a commercial product that would enable people to paint with sound wherever and whenever they want, either for professional sound-design projects or just for play. Sounds like a neat idea. If you want to contribute your ideas to shorten the market window for such a device, please give David Merrill your thoughts. Posted by Nic Mokhoff on Jul 26, 2007 01:56 PM in Consumer

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