Noisy Jelly - Students Create Musical Jell-O

NOISY JELLY from Raphaël Pluvinage on Vimeo.

Two awesome Parisian students have created one of those things that make you wonder how something so simple can be so amazing. Raphaël and Marianne Cauvard built different kinds of Jell-O molds that are filled with solutions of water, food coloring, and agar agar, which makes the mold gelatin-like. Then they place it on a game board and voila! Instant music.

How does it work? The board is actually a capacitive sensor with an embedded Arduino microprocessor. Playing around with different sized molds with unique salt concentrations will give you a varied sound for each "instrument." So while your fingers strumming the molds will cause different sounds, it's mostly the microprocessor and sensor doing the work. So while your hands most likely don't have that Midas touch to make Jell-O sing on its own, this is still incredible.

The directions from the students seem simple enough. Hopefully this brings about some budding artists.

1. Pour some jelly powder in the mold.
2. Add some water.
3. Choose a musical coloring and mix it vigorously.
4. After 10 minutes, unmold the jelly on the game board.
5. Ready to play!