This poster lets you hear what herbs and spices taste like
Don't worry, that's not a typo. You can actually swipe across this poster to hear what a handful of spices sound like. The interactive artwork is the result of a collaboration between the creative agency Grey London and Schwartz, an herb and spice brand. After an illustrator penned the visual for what each of the culinary add-ons might look like, they were assigned individual notes based on taste. For example, cumin is an E flat major and fennel got a higher-pitched F minor.
The studio then peppered in capacitive-touch tech from Novalia (a Cambridge-based interactive outfit) and conductive-ink printing for the physical production. Once the posters are paired with a mobile app, the viewer's smartphone or tablet becomes a speaker for discovering the flavored sounds. "We've basically created an app that's made out of paper. In all, 16 different herbs and spices have been translated into musical chords and the conductive inks on this poster enable you to explore those sounds with your fingers," notes Grey London's Andy Lockley. The printing process is still in the prototype phase, but I'm holding out hope for a fully interactive Mastodon tour poster at some point.
