03.07.16 | Final Project Brainstorming

For my final project, I wanted to create something that fulfilled a couple of things:

• Something interactive and approachable - easy to pick up and understand, without immediately alienating people
• Tying the project into synesthesia in some way and being able to convey that to the user or audience; in this case, breaking the established notions of a classical instrument
• Adding to the above two, something that could ultimately produce a clear, intelligent series of melodies and sounds in the hands of someone proficient in an existing instrument 

I'm tentatively calling it the "Floppiano", which utilizes one or two floppy disk drives as well as an amplifier and built-in speaker to produce sounds spanning approximately four octaves.

Linked is an example of 8 floppy drives used to produce music. 

Floppy drives also provide something of a utility in terms of allowing someone with no formal training to play an instrument: while both synthesized and acoustic instruments often have to worry about tuning, timbre, pitch sliding (glissando), modulation (vibrato), etc. the floppy drives are mostly relegated to producing "flat" notes, covering all 12 semitones across approximately 4 of the lower octaves. In terms of configuration and inputs, I was thinking something similar to this:

The diagram is just to illustrate function, rather than trying to explicitly lay out the form yet.

1. Similar to the sliders on a mixing board, the input for switching semitone or key is a single slider, with each of the twelve divisions corresponding to a semitone. Note that the slider's movements would be fluid and consistent like a light switch slider rather than "locking in" to one of twelve slots, using the Arduino to detect the slider's position within each of the twelve sections.

2. The four buttons on the right are to change between the four octaves.

3. The first large button is a binary switch that simply tells the floppy drive whether to stay "on" and sustain a note or not. That being said, it's worth keeping in mind that floppy drives generally have a limit on how long a note they can sustain (generally lasting 6+ seconds) due to it only having so much of a "track" to run on.

4. The fourth button is designed to be used concurrently with the third, allowing the user to switch between legato and monophonic play. To those unfamiliar with music theory (or the potential mechanics behind the device), using only a slider for keys and an on-off switch for sound would mean that you would have to transition through every single note between the original note you sustain and the one you want to hit after. So, for example, let's say I wanted to hit a B flat note and then immediately transition to a G flat note. Using legato play, I would have to slide downwards (left to right in this diagram), going:

B -> Bb -> A -> Ab -> G

Which, while effective in certain compositions intended for it, may not be effective in a faster piece of music where the user wanted to transition directly from one note to one it doesn't neighbor (which is extremely common). This fluid transition between neighboring notes is known as a scale, though generally only specifically applies to running through an entire register or octave of escalating notes. However, if I were to hold down the fourth button, it would switch to monophonic - a term typically associated with synthesizers - and would hold the initial B flat note until I let go of the button. That means by hitting B, holding Button 4, sliding down to G and then releasing the button, I could make a direct transition of:

B -> G

This allows for a large number of possibilities in composition and real-time play with the instrument.

5. The fifth "button" would simply be an LED (or series of LEDs) that light up as notes are played.

6. A few buttons near the LED would be toggles working independently of the rest of the board, being used for arpeggiator presets. An arpeggio consists of notes in a chord being played independently rather than being "strummed" to create a single flowing sound up or down in tone. Here's an example.

There are a ton of possible progressions / variations in arpeggio, though a few basic ones (such as a repeating up - down - up - down or call - answer progression) would be realistic to program and implement in the given amount of time.

02.17.16 | Instructables: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

The Good: Portrait Pizza by Mimikry

• Photos of work are well-lit, clearly show steps and end result
• Very elaborate & redundant relaying of information every step of the way
• Clear / legible formatting of text elements / instructions 
• Steps could be modified to suit personal projects / new spins in the future

The Bad: Febreze Grenade by bugboy251

• Inconsistently mixes stock and self-taken images
• Poor / inconsistent formatting, grammar

The Ugly: How-to with Joel 1: how to make a basic booby trap by for your safty dont give me a bomb

• 

02.08.16 | Integrate, Interact, Intervene: Conclusion & Narrative

As discussed in the prior blog debrief, our final project ultimately consisted of an "LED Tic-Tac-Toe" setup distributed to a couple of places on campus. Users / viewers could play an illuminated variant of tic-tac-toe in fairly quiet areas of campus, marking their progress (and victories, encouraging competition) in a journal that accompanied the setup. While the original location for our project was slated to be the Health & Wellness Center, I didn't have the foresight to consider that it's closed on weekends, so we had to distribute our boards to other locations that would remain open for most of the weekend. Our two final locations for distribution ended up being the small rec room in the campus library, and the Commons section of the cafeteria building with the piano, ping-pong table, etc.

While we didn't have the largest turnouts in the world, both journals had a modicum of actual use, though the number of players total is unknown; the library setup received two or three entries, as did the one in the Commons. And while the entries weren't necessarily done right, mind you (unless someone was just playing alone for laughs), we did actually get a participation element over the course of the weekend!

02.03.16 | Integrate, Interact, Intervene: Setup & Personal Contribution

For project setup, Casey, Kayla and I all met up during our scheduled class times on Monday and Wednesday the week of Thomas' absence, as well as meeting out of class that Friday (5 Feb) in order to distribute our project proper.

Materials!

What we ultimately went with was an "LED Tic-Tac-Toe" setup consisting of a 12x12", two-layer felt / foam board with a 3x3 grid overlaid in construction paper. The actual "X" and "O" shapes were made using small glowsticks, which fortunately came with little joints to allow them to easily remain in the "O" shape. In addition to the setup for the game, we also provided manila envelopes to store the final tic-tac-toe pieces and a journal set up next to the "station" so users could record their matches, ideally circling the winner. I personally made the boards out of 12x18" foam and felt boards (two of either of which provided enough material for three boards), the manila envelopes, and structuring / presentation for the journal format.

Some proposed areas we could distribute them in were the Health & Wellness Center (see prior blog post), the library, the Starbucks in the "satellite" plaza portion of campus overlooking the bridge to Pace, and possibly the gym.

02.01.16 | Integrate, Interact, Intervene: Proposal

For this project, Casey, Kayla and I partnered up the week prior to the due date for proposals in an attempt to have a concrete idea figured out by the time they were due. Our original goals were something to the extent of:

• Leaving a positive impression in the form of our project, wherever it ended up being distributed;
• Making something eye-catching, recognizable and something that would encourage the viewer / audience to interact with it;
• Causing the viewer to stray from their typical activities in the area.

The big prototype we had discussed before settling on our final concept was using Christmas lights to lead occupants of the Health & Wellness Center down a path that would ultimately lead them to a bowl of candy or gift bags, with some additional fluff discussed such as motivational messages encouraging the "user" to continue along the path. Ultimately, we went with something different due to production constraints, but I'll discuss that later.

01.24.16 | Reading Response: Art of Noise

01.27.16 | Introduction, Soldering & FABLAB

01.25.16 | Introduction, Breadboard Lab

01.20.16 | Upgrade Your Wetware

01.17.15 | Reading Response: Electric Body Manipulation as Performance Art

I'll tell you right now, I totally thought this passage was going to be focused on some type of contemporary performance piece involving borderline electrocution as a means of pseudo-choreography (I was conflating "manipulation" and "convulsion"). But, I digress: the conclusion of the article isn't actually that far off from that, albeit in a fashion with a much stronger form of intent. Elsenaar and Scha really delve more into the mechanics of electrical manipulation, which - in contrast to some of the nitty-gritty educational passages as the course demands - is oddly refreshing.

Starting off with older ventures into experimentation with electricity from its nominal Greek roots to Einstein and Tesla's squabbles in business over alternating and direct current the article does a good job of getting readers up to speed on not just what electricity was at the time, but what it meant - and in many cases, it was simply a medium that hadn't been fully explored, and by proxy of that was prone to the same follies of any foreign element, such as fearmongering, in the case of the aforementioned AC-DC debacle with Einstein and Tesla.

That being said, the potential for an artistic medium was always there, as evidenced by later experimental "performances" such as the Stephen Gray static electricity demonstration. However, electricity serves as more of a performance-based art, with humans serving as the medium in many cases; the ability for the human body to serve as a conductor for electrical charge paved the way for multiple exercises in performance art where electricity quite literally served as the spark of the performance, rather than inherently being the medium itself. This could be as subtle as Gray's lighthearted parody / social commentary through running a current through two boys connected via metal or hand-holding, or as powerful as the employed lethality of Leyden jar discharges.

Ultimately, modern-day electrical performance art focuses more on the direct (now often controlled) manipulation of the human body through electrical current, given the science behind neurology is more or less electrical and biochemical in nature in the first place. Thematic subtleties are now generally foregone in favor of illustration of precision and control capable through electrode choreography, with a specific example in the text mentioning MIDI electric guitars accompanying facial movements in perfect sync. Electricity, in this sense, has an interesting leg up on other similar art forms in that digital manipulation of tangible analog forms represents a level of control across both aforementioned mediums, wherein the human body could be strung along to an accompanying digital performance just as easily. While the manuscript is from 2002, it obviously still retains significance today, and as the field expands and advances, the evolution of performance art will continue to accompany it in lockstep.

01.17.16 | Blog Debrief: Breadboard Lab

Breadboard configuration.

The breadboard exercise and general electrical diagram information initially came off as being much more complicated than they really ended up being; I think it mainly has to do with the sheer amount of potential different symbols, graphics, etc. used in mapping out electrical circuits. Like last time, though, the actual physical work associated with the exercise ended up being way more palatable, but that may have more to do with the fact that I have an easier time learning this sort of stuff via practice, rather than written or visual aids.

I mainly relied on the cheat sheet to assemble the breadboard and thankfully got it properly running in just three or four tries; ultimately, I had everything properly wired and set up, I just had a wire or two off by a cell or "port" (not really sure what to call them). That being said, the cheat sheet served a way more practical purpose than just a means of effectively mapping the circuitry: Cole was sitting next to me at the time and did his nearly from scratch without much regard for the cheat sheet's layout, and in truth probably wound up with a more efficient setup than I did - but from what I saw it was still a bit of a struggle getting there, and the cheat sheet ultimately taught me more after having wired everything up than trying to go by the instructions did.

Side view.

Going off of the central chip's counterclockwise distribution or "progression" of power, I found myself explaining everything to Cole in a way that I wasn't even aware I knew, namely that all of the circuitry ran in parallel along its grid, e.g. a wire in cell A-15 would receive information from one of the chip's endings in cell C-15. In addition to having to "start" the positive and negative charges on either boundary of the breadboard, they had to likewise "connect" via parallel spacing to the first and last endings of the central chip. While I couldn't explicitly lay out what part or wire served what function in making the lighting alternate, I still had a pretty decent grasp on all of it. Regarding the use of additional capacitors:

4.7 microfarads at 50 volts was the "default," with the lights blinking at an average pace. Experimenting further:

At 47 microfarads and 16 volts, the lights blinked more slowly.

At 1 microfarad and 160 volts, the lights blinked much more quickly.

Applying power...

and getting light!

While I wasn't fully aware of it in class, it makes more sense now that I understand that farads are a "unit of capacity," so to speak - meaning a higher voltage pared with a lower capacity results in a faster speed of electrical transfer, and vice-versa.

01.17.16 | Blog Debrief: Physical Computing / Throwie Lab

I kept this one relatively brief because I wasn't entirely sure what we should actually be making notes of here - personal observations versus recounted lecture elements and whatnot, mainly - but decided to consolidate the Throwie Lab and reading on electricity into a single Blog Debrief, considering the two made up two parts of a larger lecture / work day, anyway.

I read the Introduction and Chapter 1 to Physical Computing (Igoe, O'Sullivan) prior to the workday, but even then I was still fairly lost until we actually started laying things out in a more kinesthetic fashion during the lecture; I've always been more software-oriented than hardware, and thus I don't have a whole lot of background knowledge regarding the actual elements behind physical computing. The most hands-on electrical work I've done was custom-building a PC and assembling it with my dad, and even then with how many tutorials you can find online the line between actual synthesis of the inner workings and just going through the instructions is pretty blurry. That being said, the lecture did actually make things click for me a lot more easily.

For some prior projects and assignments I had done some research skirting the line of the actual mechanics behind electricity, though ironically I had a better understanding of even more microscopic forces (esp. fundamental / elementary forces) than electricity before the lecture. That being said, it was all pretty straightforward when we actually got some examples / analogies as to why electrical components operate the way they do rather than just explicit, 1:1 definitions the way the book primarily laid things out. Positive charges naturally attempting to occupy negative charges makes complete sense - I don't know why I hadn't actually thought about it before - but the entire lecture kind of blew my mind, honestly. It lines up with the laws of thermodynamics, and thinking about it pretty much all of the fundamental interactions work in a similar fashion transferring positive energy into negative energy.

In terms of hands-on material (the Throwie lab), I think it was a good transition into actual "electrical work," if you can even call it that. The Throwies were exemplary of the concept(s) of electrical charge, positive and negative interactions, etc. with a little bit of of the to-be-expected Asmuth post-anarchist ideology thrown in.

I neglected to take any pictures for this Blog Debriefing, but I'll be sure to get some for the next one.