Optron Pro

Optron Mk2 is a multi-sensory electronic music controller & visualizer invented by Chet Udell. At first glance, it looks like a guitar and a lightsaber had a baby. Underneath is a powerful combination of bleeding edge electronics and RGB LED array. It is held and performed much like a guitar.

What it does

Responsive to touch, proximity, posture, motion

Optron is worn with a strap around the neck and can be played using guitar inspired and not-so-guitar inspired gestures.

It can sense position and pressure of finger presses on a custom designed guitar neck using a sensor pad topped with a silicone pad and a fret pattern etched in Teflon so your fingers can feel where they are at without looking.

The red IR motion sensors track hand-waiving gestures, so your hands can push, pull, and interact with the lights and sound.

An electronic guitar pick (ePick) was made for the Optron using a bend sensor tracking pick onsets and amplitude so your right hand can strum like a guitar.

Hearing Light, Seeing Sound

With the power of 169 ultra-bright, individually addressable RGB LEDs, Optron can rapidly switch between using light as a visual effect and using it as control input. In visualization mode, sound and other important performance status information is analyzed and translated into serial data and sent to the Optron to render as colored light patterns. Alternatively, when paired with a webcam and computer visualization software, light position and color become controller information, that can be wielded by waving hands over the lights or moving the Optron itself in space.

Oprton Mk2 [2019]

Opticks

For Optron2

Oprton Mk1 [ 2016 - 2019 ]

"Photosynthesis" for Optron

Photosynthesis is an etude for Optron1 that essentially explores the musical/visual performance capacities of the instrument. It begins by acknowledging its origins as an ordinary, if somewhat buzzy, florescentlamp. Development of this idea leads to compressing the light into a 'white sprite' - signified by a combination of glitchey vocal, electro-static, and metallic textures. The white sprite is ripped apart into red, green, and blue sprites (when combined in equal parts forms white) with each color associated with the above respective sound textures (i.e. red both affects and reacts with the vocal sounds, etc). Components are further developed until the sprites fuse together and explode into a rainbow gradient pattern. A Shepard Spiral sound illusion (a sensation of continually rising pitch while remaining still, not unlike Penrose steps) is paired with the continually looping rainbow spectrum. A 'dark' sprite emerges with strumming gestures on the Optron, swallowing up bits of the rainbow. Raising the Optron vertically in the air causes the sound and light to bleach out and intensify, fully saturate, and explode in a final conclusive gesture.

Overview

Gallery