Paper Note creates a tangible waveform from laser cut disks of paper. The user records a message, a sound or loads up music, and the system analyses the sound to map each moment to a corresponding slice.
This project was made with Andrew Nip at CIID. We programmed it using Processing. Each Paper Note is made up of around 450 stacked disks of paper. The louder the volume at a specific moment, the bigger the disk. Our algorithm samples the right amount of information from the recording to scale the physical waveform to the size of around 14cm.
Special thanks to David Gauthier, Joshua Noble and Marcin Ignac for their help with the code.
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Buenisimo!!! Gracias! Ro
It would be cool if there was a wave form reader. You know so if i received a message I could use something to play it back to me?
Very cool!
What a fabulous idea! The end result is striking.
Thanks so much for the kind words, Tod.
Hi Dale, that’s for the future… with more time
That was really cool man! What a creative project idea!
Awesome!! Will you be making this program public, so I can cut out a waveform on my laser cutter? Such a great idea!
..Felicitaciones por tu creación.
Es como poder tocar lo que se suena en el espacio.
Nice project!
but there are a lot of similarities with Fernando Brizio’s 2003 Sound System project
This is really awesome guys, shout out to Createdigitalmusic.com for finding you.
Serious question, is the software available? i’m asking because i have a simple idea to use this and say something like “i love you” to my dear girlfriend and present it to her in paper waveform as gift. Please reply, if it’s just a no, that would do
Thanks all for the nice comments!
@Almer, thanks for pointing out to his work. Looks super! indeed it’s similar but only by coincidence
@Daniel, lovely thing to give to your girlfriend! Actually, one of the Paper Notes seen here is a message to the wife of Andrew Nip saying how much he loves her
@Daniel (again) & @Chester, regarding sharing the code. There’s two reasons for not sharing it right now, although we are big on open source, we are wanting to push it a little further before sharing. And also, there some pretty user-unfriendly hiccups that we’d have to iron out before we can share it as we did this project in 3 days (concept to finish). That said, if you email me, and send me a recording, we can give you the file to laser cut. You’ll have to give us a bit of time though as we’re in the middle of the next project.
I’d buy if priced appropriately. Anything for sale yet?
Not quite yet, but maybe in the future… Thanks for the interest!
Cool stuff Andrew! Now you just need to do one for spectral analysis
cool!!!!…….. i love it……..thanks for the knowledge!!!
I loved the project, it is really awesome. I would love to have the paper waveform of a song I love but I’ve read that you aren’t sharing the code yet. Is it possible that I send you the song and you send me the file for the laser cut please?
Hey Leslie, glad you like the project! The code needs serious attention that we can’t give now, and it’s been almost a year so not even sure where to begin. Just to put in context, it’s a project we hacked together super quickly (in two days) so it’s super messy and hackie and all over the show :-/ We’re seriously considering fixing it all up at some point, but its way in the back-burner as I’m working full time on an app for the next few months. Sorry!
Hi Andrews!
I’m Jack, a Uni student from Sydney Australia. I’m currently working on a project focusing on the sonofication and visualation of data. I’m doing alot of work in processing sketching ideas, and I see the other responses you’ve given here, but was just wondering if you could share the code (as glitchy as it may be) for me to manipulate and work on. As an upside if I polish and finish the code, it would mean you don’t have to.
Let me know
Cheers