By Natasha Dzurny and Mike Milazzo
These tap dancing shoes make music. By connecting the shoes to a computer, the movement of the dancer’s feet trigger musical notes. This project was presented at NYU’s Interactive Technology Program’s Spring show.
With the show soon approaching, Natasha and Mike still needed to connect their musical shoes to a computer. They had been working with bluetooth, but the connection only remained for a few minutes. With limited time, they chose to use XBees, which provided a reliable connection between the shoes and computer.
The XBees send serial data from sensors to the computer, which is then processed by a Max MSP patch. The patch made in Max MSP generates MIDI data and is converted into musical notes in Garageband. Any digital instrument can take this data and produce musical notes from the dancer’s shoes.
See the Tune Taps presentation here.
You can read more and see more photos on Natasha’s blog: TechnoChicBlog.