Don't Play with My Hair
A speculative organic synthesizer whose parameters arise from the structure, form, and materiality of hair.
Hair carries signal. It transmits touch. It is a site of intimacy and of violence, of daily ritual and of political confrontation. Don’t Play with My Hair is a capacitive touch instrument in which the hair itself becomes the interface, a HairSynth that maps the quality, speed, and permission of contact onto layered sonic responses. The piece asks who gets to touch, what touching produces, and what refusal sounds like when it is embodied rather than spoken.
Conceptual Framework
An investigation of the often forceful policing of Black hair and beauty by Western standards and policy, and the ways hair functions as a site of both intimacy and resistance.
Platform
Built on Teensy 4.1 with custom capacitive sensing.
Video
Don't Play with My Hair — Documentation