learning the ropes

Bertoia Sounds
- Clickable sound links on this page; these are rather bell-like sounds… clangy and mechanical, but they do have an interesting personality.

Bertoia Sound Sculptures
- An online catelog of sorts. Minimalist aesthetics.

Sonic Architecture
- Works from architects/designers Bill and Marv Buchen. Many are located around NYC.

I’m looking for inspiration for the types of sounds we can make with musical tops.

SoundPlay
- Outdoor musical instruments

WindWorld
- Experimental Musical Instruments

Today we experimented with different strategies for sensing the motion of springs. The first was inspired by electric guitar pickups. I thought we might be able to create an electromagnetic pickup to sense the vibrations in the springs. We tried to create a simple electromagnet out of a nail and some transformer wire…. oh, yes… and a power drill.

We scrapped the pickup idea after measuring the resistance of the coil to be 0 Ohms. I was concerned it might short something out. Shlomit also thought we would have more creative possibilities if we used sensors rather than capturing the sound of the springs directly.

Returning to a previous sensing idea, we experimented with a flex sensors.

Flex sensors are not ideal for our application; they only sense motion in one direction and require a fair amount of deflection in order to produce a useful reading. (note for the future… measurement ranges would be useful for documentation purposes)

We also considered mounting the springs on top of a pair of joystick potentiometers to sense X-Y movement. The miniature potentiometer we tried to use for our prototype was too stiff to yield useful results. We wrapped a copper wire around the dial of the potentiometer, hoping that motion of the springs on our installation mockup would move the potetiometer and generate a varying resistance. No luck.

Another version of the musical speech patch. I spoke with Peter last week about fffb~ and made it work — to some degree.

I ran into trouble finding the frequency bin with the maximum energy. Jonathan Marcus helped me with a solution to that problem using the zl object.

The patch makes some sounds now, but still not what I hoped for. I wanted a patch that would highlight the musicality of recorded speech. I expect it would work better on some voices than others, but so far it just sounds “random.”

• When the .wav file is silent, the patch plays the last frequency in the frequency transform list (to fix, I will need to detect that case and turn off the cycle~ object)
• I tried testing the patch with the cycle~ object as an input, thinking that a pure tone would be a good way to test the patch’s ability to recognize frequencies. As I changed the frequencies of the cycle~ object going into the patch, there were some spots where the pitch detection “blew up” and returned to the highest frequency in my list.
• More experimentation needs to be done with voice recordings to see how they respond. I will post some results soon.

Using the patch
- Enable the DAC
- Click the “open” message to load a file into the sfplay~ object
- Click the “1″ attached the sfplay~ object to start playback
- The following controls modify the output: transform strength, wave volume, and transform volume
- “Transform Strength” controls the scaling of the values coming out of the fffb~. Increasing the transform strength with cause larger numbers to be packed into the frequency bin energy list. This primarily affects the height of the peaks on the multislider display.
- “Wave Volume” and “Transform Volume” adjust the relative sound levels of the original .wav file and the transformed signal. Set transform volume higher than wave volume to emphasize the transformed sound.

The Final project for Living Art will adhere to the following process:
Concept Development
Prototype
Build
Refine
Present

Earlier this week, Ji-Sun Lee and Youjeong Paik approached me about collaborating on the final project. I was still on the fence about whether to try combining my Audio Art final with this final.

Ji-Sun, Youjeong, and I brainstormed plant-like ideas yesterday. Today, So-Young joined us for a bit. We played around with a number of ideas.

At the end of our session today, we ended up gazing at the stars.

What: Make a Wish
“Make a Wish” is an immersive environment that offers the participant an opportunity to gaze into the night sky and make a wish on a falling star.

Why

• Ji-Sun and Youjeong visited an exhibition recently of an artist who uses mirrors to create infinite interior spaces. We want to explore this idea further using realism rather than surrealism.
• This project shares some common themes with our Secret Tree project: the need to express certain interior realities privately and private public spaces.

How

• Fiber optic strands will be used to simulate stars in the night sky
• Stars to be dimmed using AD5206 digital potentiometers
• Immersive environment sound using stereo speakers

Challenges

• Shooting star effect

Shlomit and I made some progress on our audio art final. We decided to build a sonic field of springs.

Strategies for sensing movement:

• Flex sensor
• Magnetic pickup (like electric guitar)
• 2-axis potentiometer (joystick)

After brainstorming more about producing sound and sensing movement, we built a tiny prototype, using the technique I discovered while building a prototype for Designing for Constraints.

Summary:
The Secret Tree listens, interprets and stores people’s secrets in its leaves or fruits with a unique format.

Idea:
Interactive sound installation which invites participants to confess their secrets. As people speak their secrets into a large knothole in the center of the to the tree it “grows” with blooming flowers and whispering fruits.

Materials:
6′ tall cardboard tree with LED lighting and miniature speakers

Inspiration:
The Giving Tree – Shel Silverstein
In the Mood for Love – Wong Kar Wai

Team:
Michael Chladil
Jee-Sun Lee
Ai-Chen Lin

My Role:
- Arduino microcontroller code
- MAX/MSP Programming
- Prototype circuit design and fabrication
- Basic woodworking

See the process.

I’m working on a personal art project for my final in Designing for Constraints. The following is my first prototype. I feel pulled in many directions simultaneously — with ITP pulling the hardest. The inner sphere represents me. The springs tug at me in all directions.

I developed this prototype from a simple sketch:

I built the prototype out of materials I already had in my studio:

CD jewel case covers	Old guitar strings and 24 gauge wire spun into springs
	26 gauge wire wrapped around a still central armature

Class feedback:
- Walls of the piece could deform under pressure.
- Piece seems performative — it may require my performance of the object to get its point across. A video might help with this.
- Stretch the box to its limits and videotape it as it breaks

Special thanks to Caleb Clark, Anh Nyugen, and Rucyl Mills for their awesome work in filming the Secret Tree.

They have more episodes at http://techtrek.tv

Aaron Siegel and Chris Peck and were guest lecturers in Audio Art this afternoon. Both compose works for untrained performers. This is one of the reasons I came to study at ITP. I want to design systems to enable untrained performers to collaborate musically.

Aaron’s piece “Work in Manufacturing” was a percussive piece with fixed rules, but varying outcomes regulated by each performer’s breathing. The rules of the piece made me feel disoriented at times because I had to keep a number of things in mind: how times I had inhaled or exhaled since beginning my current “station,” how many “stations” I had completed, and the number I had chosen as my “jump” number for selecting subsequent stations.

The overall sound of the piece was intriguing, but I prefer tonal music.

Chris’ piece “Worried Long” was a “choral” piece. I found it easier to appreciate the quality of the sound in this piece because it was richer and sustained. It sounded majestic as we sang it. I was very surprised at how harmonic it sounded — even though none of us knew the intervals we were supposed to sing. Further, only about half the class was musically trained. I don’t know how many of us could say that we know how to sing, but I really enjoyed the sound we created and would definitely consider it music. The dynamics were incredible and it was invigorating to belt out the slowed down lyrics with the rest of the class as we reached the climax of the piece.

I’ve been thinking about the discussion Amit and I had about believability. Both of the pieces seemed to have that quality. I knew nothing of the two composers beyond their remarks prior to performing the pieces, but it seemed that each piece matched the personality of its composer. Additionally, it was believable that we were creating the music together. Neither piece asked us to make an “impossible” committments in performing them. Collectively, we had all of the skills necessary to render the works. There was no need to think about which performers would be capable of properly interpreting their parts.