Interactive Wallpaper - A Musical Wallpaper That Responds To Touch

You might remember Alexandre Echasseriau, the designer who made the Capacitive iPad Cover by combining tattooing, leather work and Electric Paint. Alexandre is back with an amazing new project titled ’’Interactive Wallpaper’’.

Printed with the Electric Paint and using the Touch Board to add interactivity, this project encompasses a complete ecosystem for musical wallpaper. Alexandre developed a bespoke wall speaker and wallpaper which combined to create a decorative and functional pattern, as well as the concept for a full web to print process that the user can use to customise their wallpaper. The idea is that users or customers go online to a dedicated website where they can select a custom combination of designs and sounds for their wall. Visual and sound artists contributed to the creation of multiple sound themes and painted paper to make the environment and experience as vivid as possible.

At the heart of the system is the wall speaker, which makes a physical link between the wallpaper and the Touch Board through an SD slot at the front. It has two stereo speakers and a headphone jack, and simply attaches to the wall using a specially designed hook.

The way it works is quite simple. Sound is activated by placing a hand on the wallpaper: the walls of a room become an experimental play space. The system is connected to a dedicated Web site that allows users to pre-select the wallpaper design and its associated sounds in advance.

The web platform highlights not only designers, but also sound artists. Everyone contributes to the variety and quality of the works proposed, creating graphics as sound themes respecting the particular format and constraints of the Interactive Wallpaper project.

The Interactive Wallpaper project involved the development of a custom wallpaper printing process and this was made possible through a collaboration with the company Ugépa. Check out the video to see how the designs are developed and printed.

Alexandre participated in Prix Emile Hermes, International Design Competition 2016 with the Interactive Wallpaper project and he was among the 12 finalists!