Musical jellies

Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard's Noisy Jelly project is a game that allows each player to create their own musical instrument out of jelly. The video for the project uses absolutely no sound editing, and needs to be seen and heard to be believed...

Using a mini chemistry lab, each player makes their own set of jellies using water, agar agar powder and a series of molds. The jelly shapes are then placed on the game board, and can be manipulated to create sound.

If you, like us, are slightly bewildered about how all this works, there's some proper science behind it. The game board is a capacitative sensor, and the variations in the shape of the jelly and its salt concentration, as well as the distance and strength of the finger contact, all affect the final sound. The diagram below helps explain things somewhat.