KnittedKeyboard

Spanning from the early Musical Telegraph and Electronic Sackbut, to the late EMS Synthi AKS and Moog Synthesizers, electronic music and musical controllers, particularly the keyboards, have enabled people from all walks of life and all around the world to produce and manipulate sound as a mean for creativity, expressions, and shared experience. Note that most of the expressive keyboard interfaces to date rest on a rigid and heavy structure. On the other hand, textiles are ubiquitous in our daily life. They are highly formable and palpable materials with a broad spectrum of patterns, structures, and textures, making them a great candidate for physical interfaces. Inspired by theremin's expressive controls and the soft and deformable tactile properties of knitted textiles, we have developed an interactive textile-based musical interface with a familiar layout of piano keys.

Our prototype utilizes digital knitting technology and explores intarsia, interlock patterning, and a collection of functional (electrically-conductive and thermoplastic) and non-functional (polyester) fibers to develop a seamless and customized, 5-octave piano-patterned textile for expressive and virtuosic sonic interaction. The individual and combinations of keys could simultaneously sense touch, as well as continuous proximity, stretch, and pressure. The KnittedKeyboard II combines both discrete controls from the conventional keystrokes and expressive continuous controls from the non-contact theremin-inspired proximity sensors by waving and hovering on the air, as well as unique physical interactions enabled by the integrated fabric sensors (e.g. squeezing, pulling, stretching, and twisting). It enables performers to experience fabric-based multimodal embodied interaction and unique, intimate and organic tactile experience as they explore the seamless texture and materiality of the electronic textile.

Publications Wicaksono, I.*, Cherston, J.* and Paradiso, J.A., 2021. Electronic Textile Gaia: Ubiquitous Computational Substrates Across Geometric Scales. IEEE Pervasive Computing. [Theme Article]

Wicaksono, I. and Paradiso, J.A., 2020. KnittedKeyboard: Digital Knitting of Electronic Textiles Musical Controller. In New Interfaces for Musical Expression.

Wicaksono, I. and Paradiso, J.A., 2017. Fabrickeyboard: multimodal textile sensate media as an expressive and deformable musical interface. In New Interfaces for Musical Expression.

Coverage Digital Trends | MusicTech | KnittingIndustry

Lexus Design Award Finalist, 2021.

Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts, 2022.

“The fact that the knitted keyboard is squishy and elastic, while also intrinsically integrated with fabric sensors that are responsive to pressure and stretch, enables an intimate relationship between the physical gestures and the sound." Irmandy Wicaksono talks to Digital Trends about his KnittedKeyboard II project.