Spicy Sofi turns aircraft cockpit controls into the SOFI AIRLINES live rig

Paris-based producer Spicy Sofi has built his audiovisual show SOFI AIRLINES around aircraft cockpit controls, Magnetic Mag reports. The rig combines a Boeing 737 overhead panel, Airbus-style throttle controls, a custom radio panel and a set of software instruments, all tied together by code he wrote himself.

Sofi, who has roots in Tunis and Paris, co-founded the underground collective Morninglory and has an engineering background. The set moves through progressive house, electro, acid and breakbeat, structured like a flight from boarding and takeoff through turbulence to landing. With visual artist Haïfa Becheikh of FMRXR Studio in Tunis, he developed a system that lets music and visuals react to each other in real time, even though the two work from different countries.

The Boeing panel was rewired around four Arduino Mega boards running the open-source MobiFlight firmware, and after roughly six months of experiments Sofi wrote a Python bridge to Ableton Live 12. Its switches launch and mute tracks, arm effects and fire scenes, while annunciators light up with the music over MIDI and OSC. The thrust levers, Thrustmaster TCA Airbus flight-sim hardware chosen because it tours easily, drive filter cutoff, resonance and drive; the sidestick fires and bends drum loops.

The 3D-printed radio panel runs three Ableton effect racks, from headset-style vocals to long reverbs and glitches. The only modern controller is Melbourne Instruments' Roto-Control, picked for its motorised knobs. Longer term, Sofi wants to swap in salvaged parts from decommissioned aircraft.