Cybersonica: Building the Etch-a-Sound 3D Voice Drawing Toy

The Etch-a-Sound, shown at London’s recent Cybersonica sound art fair, lets visitors draw in 3D using their voice. It’s a bizarre idea, and the right-angle pipes recall a classic 3D animation as much as the original Etch-a-Sketch (awful model for intuitive illustration that the toy was), but it’s great fun. The creators also did a good job of documenting the process. It’s a great glimpse into a process that’s spreading rapidly: after a long drought, people are again making stuff with computers and electronics. It’s a new golden age for magical audiovisual toys.

Process of making Etch-a-Sound [flickr set]
Etch-a-Sound at Cybersonica [flickr set]
Etch-a-Sound on Pixelsumo (blog of the Cybersonica curator, Chris O’Shea)
Project Page, atoyfactory

And the video:

Brilliant work, Seulki Kang and Kenichi Okada!