The sound of colour; turntable developed to transform coloured discs into sound

Sufferers from synesthesia beware; a turntable has been developed that can read colours and transform them into sounds in a breakthrough for the colour-deaf and sound-blind across the world.

New York University “interactive communication” students Natasha Dzurny and Louie Foo are developing a device that looks and acts suspiciously like a turntable, but which uses frequency sensors rather than a needle to read a colour wheel made from a series of changeable plastic wedges.

The project entitles Colour Play uses interpretations of the shade and width of each wedge to create sound loops when played at varying speeds. Apart from quite literally allowing you to assemble the building blocks for a sound recording, the Duplo-style 3D pie-chart has succeeded in making something fiendishly complicated look incredible simple. [via Protein]