Illumaphone is a light-based, spatial musical instrument comprised of six coffee cups.
Just when you thought Anna Kendrick’s rendition of “When I’m Gone” was the most impressive piece of cup-generated music, in comes Bonnie Eisenman. The Maker had been in search of a final project for her electronic music class, and being a software engineer by trade, decided to think outside — or well in this case on top of — the box. The Illumaphone is a light-based spatial musical instrument that can be played by simply waving one’s arms over a series of paper coffee cups to produce organ-quality acoustics.
Resting on a cardboard box to hide its wiring, the six to-go cups serve as the inputs with each one keyed to a different note, while fluctuations in light levels are used to determine volume and vibrato. Based on the amount of light measured by the cup, data is then translated into a harmonic sound.
In order to accomplish this, an Arduino Uno (ATmega328) powers the electronic instrument and receives information from a set of six photoresistors, one in the bottom of each cup. The Arduino retrieves and reads the data from the light sensors, and relays it to the laptop, which runs the musical programming language ChucK to synthesize the notes accordingly.
Inspired to create one of your own? Head over to the project’s Instructables page to get started.
