This entry will catch up on some of our progress in creating a series of musical tops.
The week of our prototype presentation, we built a number of sample tops.
I also purchased two toy tops for a performance I gave in Designing for Constraints two weeks ago. One is a “BayBlade” and the other is a Duncan gyroscope.
I wanted to gain a better appreciation for how tops are constructed before we tried to make more of our own.
We discussed creating acoustic resonators for the tops to spin on and also tried to think of ways to make sounds with the tops. Qwanya (sp?) turned me onto the sound of tempered metals. She explained that her favorite sound in the Physical Computing Shop comes from the top right draw of the toolchest. The hole saws ping melodically whenever the drawer opens.
After presenting our prototypes in class, we received the following feedback:
- Become conversant in the vocabulary of tops
- Look at Taiwanese tops
- Consider the correlation between the tops and music. What is it?
- What about whistling tops?