The future is now, as a team of science wizards, Yang Zhang, Gierad Laput, and Chris Hanson have been working on a touch-sensitive spray called Electrick. Technologies like tablets and touch screens are great in small formats, but are just too costly and impractical for larger applications, which is where the Electrick spray comes in. This spray can effectively coat any object and turn it into one big touch screen, and they were even able to cover an electric guitar in it and get rid of the need for knobs of any kind. Need we say more?
As Zhang (best last name ever) states, the low-cost spray is a “versatile sensing technique that enables touch input on a wide variety of objects and surfaces, whether small or large, flat or irregular. This is achieved by using electric field tomography in concert with an electrically conductive material, which can be easily and cheaply added to objects and surfaces through a variety of fabrication methods such as painting, 3D printing, injection molding etc.”
Applied to a guitar, the player can control almost any parameter they desire as the video demonstrates. Sick of having to turn your volume knob down? Just touch your guitar anywhere! Or maybe you’d like a whammy bar sound without the whammy bar? You can just move your finger back and forth on the body of the guitar! The possibilities might literally be endless. At this rate, Electrick seems like a super flexible, practical, and downright fucking sweet thing that Zhang and his team have going on here.
The guitar section starts around 4:08, but the whole thing is definitely worth the watch. This stuff could drastically change not only the way people play instruments, but how the entire world around us operates. This could definitely be some Terminator shit right here.
