Felted Signal Processing
Felted Signal Processing by Sarah Grant is an amazing project from the ITP Spring Show. Sarah brought her obsession with wool and knitting to create a gorgeous, soft and wooly musical device. Literally, users squish wool together to make music!
Felted Signal Processing provides a wooly interface to analog signal processing circuits, making it possible to shape sound with your hands. By manipulating conductive felt attached directly to the hardware via snaps found at a fabric store, you manipulate the sound running through it; the felt acts like a variable resistor, whose resistance changes as you play with it, and therefore changes the sound.
This piece was developed for either a guitarist, bassist, or singer, providing an input jack and an output jack for connecting an instrument or microphone, to be processed and then sent back out to either an amp or another effects box, guitar pedal, or other ‘processor’. Since the incoming audio signal is simply electricity converted to voltage values via the microphone or guitar’s pickup coils, when it enters the circuit it eventually makes a trip through the conductive felt that you’re manipulating as well. As the resistance of the felt changes from you shaping it in your hands, the signal is filtered, with audible effect. So far three effects have been developed, with the help of components and printed circuit boards obtained from Build Your Own Clone.
She writes, “I am interested in exploring new applications for textiles beyond clothing and protection, which they are often thought of only being used for. I also wanted to look at crossing a predominantly feminine practice with predominantly male practices… namely electronics and sound creation/manipulation/production/etc. Felted Signal Processing is trying to not only create a new, more organic way of interacting with sound, but to also have people rethink the ways and places we might expect textiles to be used. With this project specifically, I wanted to draw a connection between the texture of wool and the texture of sound, emphasizing the kind of evocative, physical sensations that sound can sometimes induce. I think that there is a lot of correlation between sound design and textile design; each consider color, texture, and infer the ability to compose, shape, and texturize. Therefore, why not tie the two directly together? I feel that wool is a much more germane interface to sound manipulation than knobs and sliders. The ability to continuously, expressively control how the sound is being shaped seems to be a more evocative means of processing sound than knobs and sliders.”
