learning the ropes

On December 13th, I played moneytone as part of the NIME/Algorithmic Composition show at ExitArt. The 6 minute long composition was my final project for Algorithmic Composition, taught by R. Luke Dubois.

The composition was driven by financial transaction data from the past seven years of my life. I’ve been tracking my spending and earnings using software programs since 1998 and wanted to hear what this fairly large dataset (comprising 3143 days) could sound like.

Instead of simply playing a recording of the piece, I chose to perform it live to see if it would be more engaging as a performance. I built some realtime interaction into the Max/Msp patch I was using to sonify the data so I could adjust the intensity of each of the 54 category frequency bands in the piece.

I saw this video yesterday while surfing Björk’s website. It’s ironic. Several weeks ago, Jamie Allen suggested I check out Michel Gondry as a reference for my cardboard work. It turns out that Gondry works with rope and pulleys, too.

Here’s the original Michel Gondry reference. The Science of Sleep

Description:
“Rope & Pulley” is a kinetic sculpture and interface for performing audio. Fabricated from recycled cardboard and old computer parts, it was built with the idea that digital technology allows us the opportunity to endlessly remix and recycle audio. This is evident in both the building materials and in the interaction the piece affords. The rope and pulleys reference the look of an old reel-to-reel tape deck or a magnetic tape loop.

This interface is partly about the idea of looping music, a key to the production of most modern popular music, but also about the juxtaposition of the body motion with music playback and creation.

Process

Excerpt from a short videorecording I made to see what I looked like performing the Rope & Pulley. I’ve been working on the Christmas Carol all week and am not sure what I’m going to be able to present in class tomorrow night. This is a return to the original thinking behind the project, but at least I will be able to present something if it is entertaining.

In the video, the system is controlling the volume of audio playback. If I were to stop pulling the rope through my hands, the track would stop playing and the volume would decrease.

No, it’s not an electric prod for a miniature cow… it’s a work around for a vexing problem: how do I keep the optical encoder wheel securely attached to the shaft. Neither Elmer’s white glue nor hot glue were keeping the part attached to the paper sleeve, so I turned to one of my other favorite building materials: wire. I created two wire prongs to put pressure on the encoder wheel so it would stay in place.

Another challenge — I was a bit careless when I cut out a few of the layers for the pulley housing. As a result, it doesn’t sit flat and it causes the shaft to bind up when the assembly is clamped down. After struggling with the thought of completely rebuilding, I realized that I could make a flexible joint to allow some play in the mechanism. Thank you, hot glue!

It’s time to step away from the prototype and move towards a finished-looking product. Since I’ve also discovered that driving the mouse ball from the outer rim of my pulley causes the ball to spin too fast, I’ve decided to track the rotation at the shaft instead. This means I need the shaft to be attached to the pulley rather than spinning freely through its center.

I built another model in sketchup to understand how the pieces were going to fit together (and also to beef up my sketchup chops — bad idea, but I have a nice illustration now). [ later realization: one thing that's important to remember about these exercises is to continually question major time investments --at their outset and throughout the process... Is this the real problem that needs to be solved? Is there any easier way to get the effect I'm going for? Is this essential to the project? Is this part of the essence of the project? ]

Now that we’re getting down to the wire, I’m committed to cardboard as a building material, mostly as an aesthetic choice, but also because there is not enough time for me to learn the AMS laser cutting process. Prototyping in cardboard can be fast, but constructing in cardboard can be time-consuming.

Today I converted my pulleys to work with the new detection strategy. Instead of using the outer rim of the pulley to rotate the mouse ball, I’m going to attach the optical encoder wheel to the end of the pulley’s shaft. To avoid building the pulleys again, I’ve decided to patch up the hole where the bearings were seated.