MakerLab Blog » jay silver http://blog.makerlab.com Go on, be curious Thu, 14 Mar 2013 06:30:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.15 DIY Synesthesia with Drawdio – Draw Audio! http://blog.makerlab.com/2008/12/diy-synesthesia-with-drawdio-draw-audio/ http://blog.makerlab.com/2008/12/diy-synesthesia-with-drawdio-draw-audio/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:15:01 +0000 http://blog.makerlab.com/?p=466 Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink…

Drawdio was developed by Jay Silver of MIT’s Media Lab.

“One day I bought a “harmonium” kit at the street market in Bangalore“, says Silver. “I hacksawed the keyboard off to make the first ever Drawdio circuit. We played with it at a local school in the slums using plants, water, our foreheads, etc. My friend told me graphite would work too.

Meditating on it, I realized the Drawdio circuit should be literally attached to a pencil to “draw audio,” and that’s where the name came from: Draw + Audio”.

The following video shows how the children at Drishya and PICO Crickets both influenced the way Drawdio evolved:

The official Drawdio site is here. Want one? You can get one at Adafruit Industries. I just purchased two of them from there, so look for updates along those lines.

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