Interactive installation: voice painter

Paint with your voice

Prof. Anja Stöffler

In music one speaks of the so-called “voice colors” when it comes to defining a person’s voice or the possibilities of an instrument. The interactive installation “Voice Painter – Paint with your Voice” is similar to this. It was created at the Institute for Media Design (img) at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz based on an idea and concept by the master student Benjamin Böhm of the Media Design Department.

Under the direction of Prof. Anja Stöffler and in cooperation with the Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore and MIT Media Lab, USA (Dr. Jochen Huber), the interactive installation was produced by a project team on img especially for the science market in Mainz in 2013. The installation is intended to playfully arouse the interest of a broad audience in the course of study Media Design and to convey the interaction between interaction, programming and design.

Visitors to the science market could paint with their own voice on a projected screen. The visitor interacts with an augmented megaphone, which controls the brush on the virtual canvas. At the same time, it also picks up the language and thus influences both the color and the stroke width of the brush. The position of the person is recognized, with the own movement the cursor is controlled in the horizontal, the vertical is controlled by the correct pitch. With a little practice, the visitor can draw precise pictures in this way or simply experiment. The “voice painter” was a great success with young and old and has since then been exhibited at various art and media festivals.