The Frankolin
An augmented violin by Leah Reid, Feifei Xue, and Adam Somers
Presentation video
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/250a/moviearchive/Aut09.html
Overview
The current edition of the Frankolin is an electric Yamaha with 11 added sensors. All of these sensors are placed such as not to interfere with normal violin playing so that they can be used both passively for gesture capture or actively for musical parameter control. Of the 11 total sensors, 3 are sonar receivers on the body of the instrument, 3 are from an accelerometer on the violin?s body, 3 are from an accelerometer on the bow, and 2 are force sensing resistors on the bow. A MAX/MSP patch aggregates the data from the three sonar receivers in order to determine bow position, reducing the number of inputs to 9. These nine inputs are interpreted into musical performance data and are mapped onto various DSP parameters in a live-electronics, electro-acoustic setting. Because the Frankolin is receiving performance data directly from the performer, the misconnect between the performers actions and the resulting electronic sound is reduced. The received sensor data can either be mapped directly onto the performers own data or can be used as a controller to affect another ensemble member?s playing.