Thales

Thales is a composed instrument developed at the Intelligent Instruments Lab, based on two wireless controllers that interact with each other through their tangible magnetic fields. Its name comes from Thales of Miletus, the philosopher who described magnets as "having a soul".

In interaction design applications, it is common to use magnetometers to detect nearby magnets. But the novelty of Thales is that on top of the magnetometer is placed a stack of powerful magnets: as the discs detect nearby magnetic fields, the user tangibly interacts with them through the reciprocal attraction and repulsion of the magnets.

By placing a set of magnets on top of a three-axis magnetometer,  the vertical reading of the three-axis magnetometer becomes unavailable. Thales turns this limitation into a feature: in each of the discs the magnets are encapsulated in a vertically movable lifter, held in position by the player's palm. When a magnetic field is encountered the lifter pushes on the performer's hand. By releasing the pressure of the hand the riser moves up and the reading of the vertical axis is unlocked and finally controllers, similarly to the coulisse of a trombone. 

Thales can control any synthesis engine, but I developed it to investigate the design strategies around Neural Audio Synthesis (NAS). Thales uses RAVE, a NAS model for real-time interaction designed by Antoine Caillon at IRCAM in 2021. The model is trained on a dataset based on the sounds of magnets, bounced on each other or against wooden surfaces. Hence the composed nature of this instrument where the magnetic materiality defines the sound. This is combined with an FM synthesizer on the right controller's lifter and a pitch shifter on the left one.

Thales was featured at NIME 2023, Ars Electronica 2023, and is one of the winners at the Guthman Competition, 2024 edition, at Georgia Tech (3rd prize).