Making jelly go musical – Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard

Jelly is probably one of the most fun foods there is. Regardless of whether you like the taste, you can’t deny the wobbling, translucent bundles of joy will always bring a smile to your face. For Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard though, they wanted more from jelly, so have cranked up the fun factor to 11 (and the weird factor to about 7) and created the game Noisy Jelly in which players can make sweet melodies from the gelatinous dessert.

Adding a few grams of agar agar powder to a coloured jelly of choice, the mix is poured into to a mold. Once set, the jelly shape can then be placed on the game board (made from wood on top of metal) and by touching the jelly the player will activate an array of different sounds. The board acts like a sensor and the variations of the shape, their salt concentration, the distance and strength of the finger contact are detected and transform into an audio signal. It’s surreal, fun and the kind of creative thinking that always surprises us.