2015
Musical Fruitstand
A touch-fruit interface for generative music
Musical Fruitstand is a tactile musical instrument disguised as a market stall. A spread of fruit sits on the table; touching a piece triggers a sound, and the way a hand lingers, pinches or brushes shapes the resulting note. There is no screen and no instructional layer — the interface is the food.
The hardware uses Disney Research’s Touché capacitive sensing technique, which sweeps across a range of frequencies to read not just contact but the kind of contact: a fingertip, a flat palm, two hands at once, a slow drag. Each fruit becomes a different voice in the patch — pitch shifts, filter sweeps, drums, quantised stabs.
The signal chain runs through Arduino into Max/MSP and out via Ableton Live. The aim is small: invite people to play with their food, and to notice that the boundary between a familiar object and a musical instrument is mostly a matter of permission.