Pants

These pants are the alpha version of a music controller. They include ten sensors: four pressure sensors on the feet and six stretch sensors that consist of conductive rubber cables tying the legs closely together. Using an Arduino MKR1010, they send serial data wirelessly to Max/MSP and can generate and control sound from a flexible, pluggable Max patch.

Read on for the story of the pants.

Why pants?

 

  • I play woodwinds, so I wanted to build an electronic controller I could use while my hands and mouth are playing an acoustic instrument. I wanted it to be playful, sonically flexible, and wireless. Pants and shoes, especially restrictive ones, seemed fun and like they would allow for a variety of sonic possibilities while also making the effort of performance obvious.

  • Inspirations:

    • ”Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut

    • the hobble skirt and other forms of feminine fashion that limit movement (high heels, corsets, even bound feet)

    • Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice by Francisco Careri

    • A Line Made By Walking by Richard Long

    • Zen walking meditation

 

Process

I experimented with materials. I found some sensors that were a joy to work with.

I sewed together a pair of leggings with twelve bicycle pant straps and six conductive cords whose resistance increases with stretch.

I tested several Arduinos. I made a little laser-cut mount for the Arduino I chose. I soldered an external circuit board that receives analog signals from ten sensors via a multiplexer.

I sent the serial data to a Max/MSP patch that normalizes the signals and connects each one to a sound making subpatch, so that any sound-generating patch may be swapped onto any sensor.

IMG_0202 (1).jpg

Pants Demo

Next Steps

  • There are two changes I’d like to make to the wiring. First, I sewed the Arduino and multiplexer to the back waistband of the pants, which makes troubleshooting while wearing them impossible. The beta version will have the circuit components and wiring on the front of the pants. Second, I made the connections sockets instead of soldering directly to the boards. This made experimenting easy, but it’s not robust, and the connections pop apart easily. The beta version will have more robust connections and fewer of them.

  • The shoes are fun all by themselves, and there’s no reason they should have to be connected to the pants. They could be separate instruments. Then, there would be more flexibility for any given composition or performance. I’m considering making this into two separate instrument: shoes and pants.

  • After repeated stretching, the conductive rubber cables between the legs tend to snap. An alternative way of sensing stretch or leg effort might need to be found, and maybe non-electronic bungee cables can connect the legs to maintain the legs-tied-together effect.

  • I’ve developed a catalog of several compositions I’d like to create using this instrument. For all of them, I think it will be more effective to treat the leg sensors as just one or two groups of sensors acting in concert rather than six separate controllers. I also think, to obviously sonify the process of walking, more sustained sounds should be used for the leg sensors.