Sonic Untethered
Sonic Untethered reimagines the robust, multi-sensory experience of light, sound, motion, and theatrics found in the traditional brick and mortar performance venue as a compact and untethered smart-garment that can be worn by a performing artist anywhere, anytime.
Sonic Untethered is still in development but, in brief, will be a fabric-based frame hosting a series of light-weight, interconnected, credit-card-sized panels. Each panel will be constructed out of a custom printed circuit board (PCB) covered by a 3D-printed faceplate. Here, each PCB will contain a microcontroller unit driving one multi-color e-paper screen and two sets of aesthetically different LED matrices. The e-paper screen and LED matrices will display through respective openings in the 3D printed faceplate. The entire matrix of interconnected panels will be driven by a single control unit also housed within the garment. The control unit will contain user-interface controls, microphones, and accelerometers and will analyze and translate gathered sound and motion data into instructions that are broadcasted out to the panels in real-time.