The Raspberry Pi has proven to be a unique choice for quite a few musicians over the years. Today, we’re sharing a custom performance put together by artist Max Björverud, who’s using a Raspberry Pi to power his interactive art display. The project is called Technoframes and features artwork that plays techno music when you touch any of the hands in the pictures.
The project was shared on Reddit, where maker Björverud confirms that each picture relies on capacitive sensing for user input. Behind each hand is copper tape. The Techoframe music changes depending on which hand is being touched, making a unique song on the spot.
(Image credit: Max Björverud)
In the demonstration video, we see a few people standing in front of a few framed pieces of artwork. Each picture contains a variety of symbols, one of which is hands. The people are touching the hands, which causes various techno tracks to loop. The tracks vary depending on which hand is being touched.
According to Björverud, the frames each have an ESP32 board and a Raspberry Pi in its speaker box. The pictures are all designed to play in sync with each other and always be in tune. They communicate wirelessly via UDP and use the Raspberry Pis to translate the input into audio output.
The techno loops are handled using an application called PureData. This program is an open source visual programming language designed for creating your own electronic digital music from scratch. In this case, it's creating interactive loopable soundbites that come together to create a personalized techno concert on the spot.
If you want to see this Raspberry Pi project in action, check out the demonstration video shared on YouTube, and don't forget to explore the original thread shared on Reddit for more details about how it works. If you enjoyed this project, be sure to follow Björverud for future artwork and projects, as well as any updates on this one.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
