trikoton | The Voice Knitting Machine

For the festival Ars Electronica 2007 we created GELSOMINA,
the Voice Knitting Machine: In the installation
a mechanical machine of the 1970ies was hacked to
become interactive. The scheme of pattern cards of old,
mechanical knitting machines was used for an audio data program,
realised in processing. Now the frequency band of a spoken message
is converted into a binary code for knitting patterns.
Therefor we used 4 microcontroller and 24 small engines in order
to imitate a pattern card that could be directly controlled
by the voice signals via a computer.