Drawdio: A Pencil that Lets You Draw Music Turn Almost Anything into a "Theremin" Drawdio - Make It . Remix It . Play It - Buy - Press/Museums - Game Bender Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink...
Made with Paula Aguilera and Eric Rosenbaum. Thanks to Matea, Micah, Will, Chris G., and Jodi. Drawdio brings to life the everyday interconnections between people and environment, encouraging you to use your sense of touch, and letting you hear otherwise invisible electrical connections by creating, remixing, and playing. How Can I Participate? Build it on your own or build it from a kit. Then modify it, remix it, and invent with it. How Was It Invented? One day I bought a "harmonium" kit at the street market in Bangalore. I hacksawed the keyboard off to make the first ever drawdio circuit. We played with it at a local school in the slums using plants, water, our foreheads, etc. My friend told me graphite would work too. Meditating on it, I realized the Drawdio circuit should be literally attached to a pencil to "draw audio," and that's where the name came from: Draw + Audio. I like showing how ideas germinate. So here is a video of the very first day I ever used the circuit. (Many sources influenced the design of the Drawdio circuit. This video shows how the early evolution was coproduced by children at Drishya, and you can see early influence of the PICO Cricket.)  . Main concept collaborator Eric Rosenbaum. Support from MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten. Kit collaboration with Ladyada.
Material related to Drawdio has been released under a Creative Commons (attribution share alike) license. Please attribute like this: "Based on work by Jay Silver in the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab" Last updated: 6/26/2011, made by "hand" |
