The T-stick

The T-stick was created in 2007 by Joe Malloch in collaboration with the composer D. Andrew Stewart.  It was originally part of the McGill Digital Orchestra project, but has grown in popularity since then, being played actively in international performance.  In the shape of a staff, the T-stick creates sound by an array of sensors along its shaft.  It is sensitive to touching, tapping, twisting, tilting, squeezing and shaking.  All of these "gestures" can be used by a performer or composer for musical expression.

This performance, by D. Andrew Stewart, took place at the International Computer Music Conference 2009 in Montreal.  He's playing on the soprano t-stick which he calls the "sonar jo".  The piece is called "Everybody to the Power of One"


Everybody to the Power of One (ICMC Performance) from Joseph Malloch on Vimeo.

The Sonification Handbook Chp. 5: Sonic Interaction Design

The fifth chapter of the sonification handbook introduces the emergent field of Sonic Interaction Design (SID).  Although the authors discuss the use of SID in interactive art and music, they largely miss the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) literature, focusing instead upon more simple interactions and product design.  They acknowledge a difficulty inherent in evaluating interfaces and believe that Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) needs to consider culture, emotion and experience rather than simple function and efficiency.  

Metaphor, the authors propose, is the most important question for mapping in SID.  The metaphor should be "convincing to the user, need little explanation, be in unison with the users expectations, and create sounds so rich in complexity that users are not bored or annoyed by them (p.106)"  Model-Based Sonification (Chp. 16), they argue, is very promising as the user can be expected to naturally discover the relevant bindings.

This video demonstrates how sports devices can be augmented to convey configuration using interactive sound.  There are more examples here.

Source: J. Hummel, T. Hermann, C. Fraunberger and T. Stockman.  Interactive Sonification of German Wheel Sports Movement, Proceedings of the ISon 2010, 3rd Interactive Sonification Workshop, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, April 7, 2010.