Re:sound

Re:sound is an accessible music interaction system for groups with limited hand mobility, reduced tactile sensitivity, or fine motor difficulties. Traditional musical instruments and digital music devices require pressing, grasping, striking, and precise finger control. Re:sound is not intended for repetitive rehabilitation training. Instead, it considers how more natural body movement can enable musical expression, thereby ensuring that differences in physical ability are no longer a barrier to creative participation.

Re:sound reorients musical control from precise touch toward bodily movement, using an illuminated glove as a non-contact input interface. The glove wearer waves their hand, and the light passes through five sets of prisms arranged on the interactive surface, creating visible refraction and reflection changes that are then captured by LDR photoresistors. Arduino handles the sensor data, and p5.js maps different inputs to sound, together enabling hand movements to trigger, layer, and navigate different musical components. This approach synchronizes visual light effects with sound in real time, turning the body movement itself into a visible and audible expression.

Re:sound innovates not by simplifying musical interaction, but by preserving creative openness through low-precision, non-contact interaction. Users do not need to perform precise finger operations, nor are they confined to a basic press-to-play pattern; they can freely explore sound with the combination of their movement amplitude and position.

Physically, Re:sound integrates a layered modular structure, orchestrating prisms, sensors, and electronic components. It uses a transparent acrylic top layer to deliberately reveal the optical path and interaction mechanism, elevating the technical structure into part of the visual experience. Its modular design also facilitates component replacement, repair, and upgrades, keeping the system usable for longer.