DigiTouch is a TouchDesigner patch that uses the MediaPipe plugin to create a dialogue between the Digitech Vocalist VHM5 (which was discontinued in the 90s) and TouchDesigner. It was programmed with the goal of merging old tech with new, and using defunct music technology in ways it was never intended to be used.

The user’s pinch distance is remapped onto the Digitech Vocalist’s specific MIDI settings so that the Vocalist can be controlled by user movement. The patch can be reconfigured to accept other MediaPipe metrics as inputs instead, including finger, hand, face, and pose tracking. DigiTouch also has the option to ‘key-lock’ and only ‘play’ the notes that are in a key of the user’s choosing (as seen in the below video). At the moment, it’s only mapped out all major scales (and, technically, their relative minors), but could be expanded it to include other modes.

DigiTouch acts in conversation with the vocoder’s ability to trouble “how we constitute ‘the human body’ at any given time” due to its muddling of human and non-human sounds, challenging notions of authenticity in music (Dickinson 2001, p. 335). The DigiTouch vocoder setup allows for greater autonomy over my voice and challenges norms of what vocalities I might be assumed to have; additionally, it gives me access to in-between noises – a slippage and expansion of the normal boundaries of the voice –  that often constitute queer and trans sonic art and music (Eppley 2024; Tigers 2021). Related to a deep history of (trans)gendered electronic noise stretching back to Wendy Carlos and mapped out onto the presently-political medium of my body, the possibilities of the DigiTouch resonate into the future; more a possible groundwork or tool to use for future projects than a completed work itself, the DigiTouch program marked my first foray into using TouchDesigner to control MIDI devices using external metrics

Please email me if you would like a more in-depth look at how the TouchDesigner patch works; videos of it in action can be found on my Instagram.