The Oracle of Atlantis

The Oracle of Atlantis was an interactive sonification piece created for Joe Paradiso's electronic musical interfaces class at the Media Lab.  It consisted of a fountain of water which reacts to a user's touch by generating sounds based on the user's proximity to and interaction with the water stream.

Sensing the user's interaction with the liquid was accomplished by pumping water through a 3D printed manifold which contained a capacitive attached to a simple relaxation oscillator circuit.  When a user loaded the system by touching the stream, changes in oscillation frequency were measured by an Arduino which controlled audio synthesis via the OSC protocol.