Zusammenspiel

Zusammenspiel is a musical instrument that can only be played by two people: both wear gloves, and only when their fingers touch does a note sound. The student project by Maximilian Petzold was developed under my supervision in the sub-programme Design of Interactive Media at the University of Wuppertal.

25 possible contacts are each assigned a tone, and since several fingers can be connected at once, the instrument is polyphonic. A chord therefore requires the two players to coordinate. The sounds also respond to how the hands are held. Each glove contains a gyroscope whose readings modulate the tones: one sensor alters the pitch, the other controls the intensity of the vibrato. A microcontroller handles both the sensor readings and the sound generation.

In design terms the project shifts the interface: it lies between two people rather than between a person and a machine. Every touch is a coupling, a port through which energy is translated into sound. Here, touch is not an input method but the instrument itself.

Zusammenspiel was shown in 2026 at Kunsthalle Barmen in the exhibition [Effort

• Flow](/works/effort-and-flow/), realised in cooperation with the Collaborative Research Centre 1701 Port-Hamiltonian Systems at the University of Wuppertal, which brought together works on energy flows, interactions, and couplings between systems.