As I was reading the prompt and scanning Youtube and Vimeo for Sound Art projects that interested me, I came upon this one, titled Beat Slicer by Amanda Ghassaei. I chose this one because it was simple and minimal, on a level where I would understand and not be too overwhelmed with a lot going on.
The Beat Slicer is an arduino-powered music controller. Each button manipulates the playback of the song programmed. And although, in the controller is a lot of physical computing aspects I am yet to understand, I can imagine that each button is programmed in its own way to produce its own unique manipulation of the song.
Amanda Ghassaei uses the same controller for other projects, and has published an instruction guide here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Sugarcube-MIDI-Controller/