Tetsuaki Baba / Kyushu Graduate School of Design / 2007 / Japan Touch communication interface system

Freqtric Project is a skin contact interface system that allows us to recover face-to-face and even body-to-body communication in an era where the telephone, e-mail, and Internet chat offer a certain kind of proximity but only at the price of a distance.

Freqtric Project uses Electro Dermal Activity (EDA) and human skin resistance to detect skin contact. The circuit of this device uses the human body as a conductor for intra-body transmission. Physical contact with other participants passes through them and into one of the device’s many sensors.

There are currently two applications of the concept: Freqtric Drums and Freqtric Game.

When used as a live musical intrument, audience members are turned into a drum set: the performer, as drummer, communicates with the people surrounding him or her by tapping them rhythmically and producing music. A home version goes so far as to undermine even the concepts of performer and audience, when up to four individuals play each other simultaneously.