MIDI-Board T-shirt

Imagine a T-shirt in which you can control lights, sounds and images? The “MIDI-Board” (2017) t-shirt is a textile version of controllers used by musicians and visual artists like djs and vjs. This project explores the possible applications and potential of conductive ink in textile and is part of a series of experiments using real time data and electronic wearables.

To sonify the body movements, Yamaha released in 1994 a musical wearable instrument called Miburi and it was used by musicians and performers. And finally, two years ago, an English startup released a commercial textile based wearable instrument. The Mi.Mu gloves is open source and so far, only few djs and experimental musicians are using it. If you want to know more about what it can do , I suggest you to watch the Ted talk of Imogen Heap. In contrast to wearable gadgets, e-garments can cover comfortably the skin surface, being, so, less obtrúsive.
During this research , I wanted to make comfortable interactive wearables that are easy to wear, to transport and to play with.
Therefore, the question of how to seamlessly integrate the technology within the textile structure became my motivation.

The project consisted of two wearables, the sleeves using digital input and the t-shirt using analog input. Both are connected to the lightblue bean, which sends MIDI signal via bluetooth to the computer. And I am using, in this case, Ableton as a software to sonify the motion of the body. However, the scenario is much broader than that. This platform can be used by different users profile with different goals.
Because it is possible to convert data into sounds and images to project into spaces.
Also, you can connect it with different apps to control games and lights. The possibilities are endless.

The project was supported by the Media Interface professorship of the Bauhaus Universität and was part of my master thesis called “Codes in Motion” (2017) and by the DAAD scholarship.