Render of a white sequencer with a grid of grey pads, three copper buttons and a fader, wired to three copper-coloured patches

Unsound

Tactile rhythm sequencer

Year: 2024
Place: London
Context: Solo project, Royal College of Art and Imperial College London
Role: Concept, research, prototyping

4 steps: each pad is one beat in the sequence
Patches: silicone, each with a vibration motor

Compose your rhythm in the world of no sound.

01Hearing is a form of touch

The Deaf DJ KIKAZARU has described arriving at a nightclub to play and being left “standing outside in the cold for a good 20 minutes” while staff worked out what to do with “that Deaf Guy”.

The percussionist Evelyn Glennie calls hearing a form of touch: you feel it through your body. Research at the University of Washington found that deaf people process vibration in the part of the brain others use for sound.

02Beat Sense

It began as Beat Sense, a wearable for DJs with hearing loss. It plugs into the headphone channel of a DJ controller, and patches on the arm let the DJ feel the low, mid and high frequencies.

Sketch of a figure with three patches on the arm labelled high, mid and low EQ, linked to a DJ controller — The first proposal. High, mid and low EQ mapped to patches on the arm.

Arduino board wired to two breadboards with a push button and a small microphone module — First breadboard. Arduino, push button and microphone module.

Laptop and Arduino on a large sheet drawn with a figure and the words feeling the music in the world without sound — Initial prototype on the Beat Sense sketches.

Table covered with printed research, sketches, a laptop and the Arduino prototype — The research wall beside it.

03From feeling a mix to writing one

Unsound goes a step further: a tool for Deaf people to compose rhythm through vibration on the skin.

It works like a step sequencer. Each row of pads drives one silicone patch with a vibration motor inside. Each pad is one beat in a sequence of four steps. A knob on each row sets how strongly that motor vibrates. Play, stop, loop and a tempo fader run the sequence.

Line drawing of the sequencer: five rows of pads, a knob per row, play, stop and loop buttons, a tempo fader, and coloured patches on cables — The sequencer and its patches.

Outline of a body with coloured patches on the chest, arms and thighs, labelled kicks, high hats and toms — Everyone feels vibration differently, so the wearer places the patches. One might carry kicks, one hi-hats, one toms.

04Testing it

The demo runs on an Arduino. Its motors cannot make the ideal pulse shapes, so pulse width modulation stands in for them.

Two sequencer patterns beside their waveforms: smooth ideal pulses above, square demo pulses below — The ideal pulses, and what the demo motors manage.

Testing the intensity knob. Sound on.

Breadboard test.

Turning the knob, close up.

05Still to do

It needs validation and feedback from Deaf users, with Deaf West Theatre as the case user.