Year: 2013

The Phondle (from engl. to fondle + greek phoné = sound) is a midi interface designed for whole-body interaction. With its soft feel and acoustic feedback, it motivates to explore the potential of the human body as a musical instrument.

It is widely accepted and seems like a matter or course that the means of interaction with a digital device are eyes, ears and fingers (e.g. a computer with a monitor and keyboard). What if we break that boundary and think about how we could use our whole body as a means of interaction?

The Phondle is about 180cm tall and 50cm in circumference. It has 30 touch sensors that I have built entirely on my on out of conducting foam, as there were no suitably soft and large enough sensors on the market.

The electronic circuit is controlled by a Teensy 2.0 microcontroller and programmed with Arduino.