BIOMUSE (Box with chord plug in photo). Created by Stanford researchers
R. Benjamin Knapp, and Hugh S. Lusted, BIOMUSE uses EMG (electromyograph) sensors
to transduce muscular voltage differentials into musical output. Using BIOMUSE,
one is able to create music by coordinating simple to complex muscular movements.
The designers of the technology used leg and arm signals for inputing commands
to the system. Warner, however, was able to simply attach the sensors
to a paralyzed child's face which contained the only parts of her body she cold
actually move.
Biomuse was a $20K dollar device making it inaccessible to a majority of potential
users. This challenge was met as the Insititute went to "off-the shelf" technologies.
Warner and engineer Salomo Murtonen went to work on creating an affordable
subsitute for BIOMUSE. The result was the first THNG 1,
a 4-channel EMG signal detector linked to the parallel port of a PC. TNG 1 effectively
substituted BIOMUSE for a cost of less than $200.
Solving a problem with minimal funding and devices available from Radio Shack
is a tradition with I3. If a device exists which could empower a person
but its cost is far out of the reach of most who could benefit by it then nothing
socially significant has really been
accomplished through developing that technology.