Zoonori is a musical interface out of paper folding. Experiencing zoonori is a way of discovering paper transforming into different shapes by folding and creating music. Wiring enables the paper delicately senses touching and holding your fingers together. The paper is guiding to trigger folding movements in blue print order. Switches made out of conductive fabric is visibly embedded on the paper. Exposed switches indicate secretive instruction like puzzle game. One fold is assigned to one note of vocal sound so folding rhythm is converted to music. Combination of fold creates harmonic sound. By folding multiple origami with others creates a symphony.

Intimacy of Tangible User Interface (TUI)

Our windows to the digital world have been confined to flat rectangular screens and pixels – “painted bits.” But while our visual senses are steeped in the sea of digital information, our bodies remain physical world. “Tangible bits” give physical form to digital information, making bits directly manipulable and perceptible. --- Hiroshi Ish

Reading Hiroshi Ish’s definition of Tangible User Interface(TUI) comparison to Graphical User Interface(GUI)[ ], I found that what was missing with digital interfaces - keyboards and screens - and why it took sometime for me to get use to them. Computers in the market are fabulous as efficient communication tools, but they are lacking sophisticated emotional communication. As a sculptor, I had to force myself to sit in front of the static digital interface to learn efficient tools for my needs.

Hiroshi Ishi’s notion of intimacy in physical interface encouraged further exploration about adding physical construction features for the user. The bottle[ ], from his TUI Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), is the inspiration behind the zoonori. There is a magical illusion between the physical object and the sound. He used a traditional behavior of opening a bottle and smelling it to play sound samples. When a user opens a clear glass bottle the sound comes out as the scent comes out from the soysauce bottles. The Paper in the Origami Symphony will also have the illusion of containing the sound sample within the object. The difference is that the sound is produced form the user’s own creation. The sound exists during and after the user creates an origami shape and then disappears when he or she deconstructs it.

The collaborative interaction in zoonori was inspired by recent developments of various tabletop tangible music controllers. The reacTable uses physical objects on a tabletop projection surface to represent the parts of the modular synthesizer. Performers can change the topology of the synthesizer. One of the main features is that the sound is synthesized by the distance between the cube blocks on the table. While the reacTable uses modular synthesis, Origami Symphony uses loop-based synthesis and sound samples are independently looping with the object.

Tactile Visualization of Sound: NIME Artists (Maybe Just focus to Mention Golan Levin)
The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression(NIME) started out as a workshop at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in 2001. Since then, researchers and musicians from all over the world gather to share their knowledge and late-breaking work on new musical interface design. I am inspired by the interfaces that deal with the correspondence of sound from visual or vice versa with tactile quality. Toshio Iwai and Golan Levin are may favorite artists who creates unique musical interfaces with tactile visualization.

Toshio Iwai is a new interactive media artist whose work is focused on light relating to the sound. His recent success in Electroplankton[ ] for Nintendo DS was exciting because the relation between cute characters and sounds. The characters in Electroplankton correlate to the tones and the melodies of sound. For example, Volvoice, a bubble like character, is a character that contains recorded speech. As user changes the shape the recorded voice will change. (explain more about the interface) This interface also demonstrates how different manipulations of the touch screen can be applied to various musical expressions.

Golan Levin is an artist, engineer and composer interested in developing artifacts and events which explore supple new modes of interactive expression. His work focuses on the design of systems for the creation, manipulation and performance of simultaneous image and sound, as part of a more general inquiry into non-verbal communications protocols in cybernetic systems. In The Manual Input Sessions performance by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman, the audience can feel the tangible hand movements in the digital presentation. During the performance, a computer vision system analyses the silhouettes of the performers’ hands as they scribble on transparencies, and move across the glass tops of the overhead projectors. The hand gestures and transparency drawings are then analysed by their custom software. In response, the software generates synthetic graphics and sounds that are tightly coupled with the forms and movements of the performers’ actions. The logic of the sound trigger is clearly animating that it is from human hand movement. His work captures the analog movement of the human body and emphasizes that wave by interchanging between sound and motion graphics. Thus, his work contains both tactile and analog qualities through the use of digital media. Messa de Voice is the most successful piece demonstrating these qualities. Because the sound of the performance comes from the human voice and the motion graphics naturally smooth enough to correspond to the voice.








zoonori is for anyone who enjoys music and crafting. It is a musical toy but not necessarily only for children. Depending on the difficulty level of origami, it can be suitable for children, untrained adults or even advanced origami artists. I will start developing the project with a few simple folding shapes, but my goal is to have a large collection of various folding patterns available in each sheet. In the future, the physical piece can be manufactured to allow mass numbers of users to have it as a personal device but in this project I will only discuss the project in the scope of an art installation or a performance use.

Spacial Interaction scenario
There is a horizontally long paper on the wall with origami cut outs on people’s eye level. Users will walk to the wall almost leaning their body to it. By folding origami shapes from the wall, users can create musical sound. User will experience an intimate moment with the wall. And other viewer passing by will see people lined up facing the wall moving their arms.

Musical Interaction scenario
The music will be mapped as two different categories - the base beat and the melody. There are simple forms and complex forms of origami. The simple origami shapes will play base beats as percussion instruments, and the complex origami will be the melody interface. A group of origami shapes will form a band that will produce multi-layered musical pieces. The player will start from a simple origami design to create a base rhythm and then make another to add a percussion beat based on the first rhythm. When a sequence is created, the sequence will loop as the origami stays still. Once the base music is made, the player can craft melody origami to formulate a sequence of melody. When the player shakes or places it on a specific board, the melody or base beat will play faster, slower or backwards. Similar to beat origami, by folding multiple melody origami, users can make harmonic sound as well. Although folding an origami piece is slow and meditative, playing with multiple origami pieces can compose exciting music. Depending on the user’s preference, the music can be purely melodic or purely rhythmic

The zoonori is made out of tyvek (durable paper) and conductive fabric. Conductive fabric is mapped as switches on the paper. When there is a fold it triggers the sound through Max MSP.