Looking at ways to make the Space Rock shapes less rigid / more flexible.
Category: sketches
Schematics for installation
Some sketches for presenting the four Space Rocks.
Fitting the electronics into the shapes
A rough guide to how all of the required electronics (XBee, Arduino Nano, speaker, sensor and – hopefully – a USB power bank) might fit into the four Space Rock shapes. All items drawn to scale.
Restricted vision goggles
Following on from discussion of presenting the objects in an environment that emphasises the sound over the visual, I revisited the snow goggles I had seen on one of my visits to the British Museum.
The Menil exhibit in Houston tries to re-create the limitless feeling of the Arctic where the horizon is hard to determine and it’s easy to get disoriented by the blinding snow. For centuries, different Inuit cultures have used “snow goggles” to help them see in such a bright white environment. The narrow slits constrict the wearer’s field of vision and reduce light to the optic nerve. Similar goggles are still used today.
https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/18-upside-down-arctic-realities
Research Workshop – Critical Thinking
A couple of sketches for the final ‘We Are Here’ presentation, with contributions from the Critical Thinking workshop group. The concept of presenting the objects in a dark space would help enhance the audio content.
Also useful for the final show piece is this Scientific American article about the brain compensating for the loss of one sense by enhancing others.
Super Powers for the Blind and Deaf.
The brain rewires itself to boost the remaining senses. If one sense is lost, the areas of the brain normally devoted to handling that sensory information do not go unused — they get rewired and put to work processing other senses. Brain imaging studies show the visual cortex in the blind is taken over by other senses, such as hearing or touchhttps://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-the-blind-and-deaf/
MagLev sketches
Some sketchbook work exploring how the objects could work using magnetic levitation.
Arduino research 17/05/2018
Today I’ve been looking at how to build the various Arduino circuits for the Space Rocks, and at some examples of relevant projects.
I made some basic sensor experiments with a Light-dependent resistor, ultimately using this code from the Make: Getting Started with Arduino book.
// Example 06b: Blink LED at a rate specified by the // value of the analogue input # define LED 9 // the pin for the LED int val = 0; // variable used to store the value // coming from the sensor void setup() { // put your setup code here, to run once: pinMode(LED, OUTPUT); // LED is as an output // note Analogue pins are // automatically set as inputs } void loop() { // put your main code here, to run repeatedly: val = analogRead(0); // read the value from the sensor analogWrite(LED, val/4); // turn the LED on at // the brightness set // by the sensor delay(10); // stop the program for some time }
And this circuit:
Also stumbled upon How to Build an Arduino synthesizer with Mozzi library
The Mozzi library looks super-useful for sound generation:
Currently your Arduino can only beep like a microwave oven. Mozzi brings your Arduino to life by allowing it to produce much more complex and interesting growls, sweeps and chorusing atmospherics. These sounds can be quickly and easily constructed from familiar synthesis units like oscillators, delays, filters and envelopes.
You can use Mozzi to generate algorithmic music for an installation or performance, or make interactive sonifications of sensors, on a small, modular and super cheap Arduino, without the need for additional shields, message passing or external synths.
Note to self to also check out the Mozzi examples gallery.
Space Rock shapes – 3D printed prototypes, so far
The latest 3D printed prototypes for the Space Rock shapes.
Plus a video of the shells glowing, courtesy of Arduino.
Latest (simplified) Space Rock sketches and 3D prints
Looking at some shapes that tessellate for the Space Rock 3D models.
Space Rock interaction eco-system (first draft)
A first draft of how the four Space Rock objects will interact with each other, and with audience (‘actors’).
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