Baobab Patchbay

Wool felted synthesizer patchbay

The Baobab Patchbay is a system of felted flowers meant to work in concert with our synthesizer called Oto.

The steel wool core of each flower acts as a node that can be patched to and from through conductive thread patch cables.

Reading Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things sparked the overall concept for the instrument. Bennett proposes that non-human things have their own agency that influences our experience and behavior in the world. We wanted to metaphorically amplify these imagined flowers’ influence through sound.

The performativity of music is an understated concern on electronic instruments, that are most often densely packed with knobs and features. We wanted to let these actions expand into a larger physical and acoustic space.

This patchbay belongs to our research on e-textiles, and a particular attention was put in the choice of the fiber materials: the wool was donated by a local shepherd. We took care of the long process of washing, carding, dyeing and felting the wool. In addition, cotton embroidery thread was used to give details to the surface of each flower. Everything we learned was by word of mouth or through online resources, and we find a certain commonality in the open source type of knowledge of both fiber crafts and DIY electronics.