The musical sewing machine

You hum it and I'll stitch it.
You hum it and I'll stitch it.

What's the best way of visualising sound? It's an interesting question, and the Sound.Butter Interactive Design Group has come up with a quirky answer: create a musical sewing machine.

The concept is this: you feed the machine music, and then a waveform representation of what's been played is stitched into fabric.

"My aim was to produce a device where representation of sound would be a physical one," says the creator on the Sound.Butter website. "I therefore used the sewing machine as the basis for the project as I feel it is synonymous with industry, and making physical products."

All of which is very clever, but there's one small problem: it doesn't actually work.

"Due to limitations in my computer programming skills this model of a stereo/sewing machine is a prototype of how I imagined the actual product would look," admits the inventor.

Somehow, we can't see this thing ever reaching the mass market, but we'd certainly like to see someone have a crack at building it. Any takers?

(Via Gizmodo)

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.