Sweet flip it's finished!

I'm so pleased to be able to share our finished interactive guitar, Carolan, with you all played by the wonderful Nick Perez who did a fantastic job making the guitar a reality.


We started out by developing Steve's idea of using artcodes to give objects a digital footprint. Artcodes by Aestheticodes are amazing little things that look like regular illustrations and designs but are cleverly encoded so that they respond in a similar way to a bar code or QR code. Imagine being able to scan embellishment on your guitar and using the GPS on your phone to log all the different places you've travelled with your instrument. Or if you're the practical type, perhaps the artcode could redirect you to your guitar's manufacturing information. We couldn't wait to get going on the project and make it happen!

With plenty of advice, testing and hard work from Nick, Adrian Hazzard, Liming Xu and Steve Benford,  I have designed the celtic inspired knots not just as embellishment for the guitar but as part of the structure, with parts of the knotwork cut out to make the sound holes. It's been an exciting application of Steve's vision of combining traditional craftsmanship with digital encoding, giving traditional objects a digital footprint. As the knotwork is interactive, the digital encoding is physically combined with the traditional craftsmanship and structure the guitar itself, the digital element has a direct influence on the sound the guitar makes. If you're wondering what digital encoding sounds like you can find out here!