I worked with Matt Richard for midterm assignment of living art class. We tried to create some patterns with LED’s in tubes on white surface. Soldering bunch of LED’s was very painfull. We used TLC 5490 to multiply the LED’s each TLC can be used with 16 LED’s also you can daisy chain them up to 9 TLC. We used 4 of them, which means 64 LED’s. TLC5490 gives you full control of each LED.
Wiring of LED’s also looks very intense:
Also we have a video with the lights
Assignment for this week, is to create some patterns with our physical objects. I was thinking about, building something like printer with a candle. It was hard to build a printer in short amount of time. So, I came up with an idea of using a servo and putting a candle un top of it. So, candle was rotating and droping some wax on a black piece of paper.
I am sure videos will make it clear.
Assignment for the class was to creating a random. This needs a lot of brain storming. First question that you need to ask to yourself is what is random? What makes something random? One thing, that drow me crazy was, if we watch a random thing long enough, would it become a cycle? I think random choices for an operation would end at one point and it would start repeating itself.
I started to create a random, which is like a piano falls down to your head on the street (Todd Holoubek explains it this way).
My first prototype was an electromagnet which has iron fillings on it, and a sonar sensor. I was planing to set it up on top of a class entrance, but magnets didn’t worked well. So, I started to work with a servo motor. The algorithm is so simple. Whenever I set the trap up, it creates a random number, then starts to count number of person who enters the room. If the person, who is entering the room is equals to random number, servo works and it poors some confetti on persons head.
Actually this project is a prototype for a bigger project. Assignment for living art class was, making a finite state machine. This was a greate chance for me to start working on my prototype for a bendir interface.
What is Bendir?
Bendir is a very old drum, that usually used in Turkish musics . It is a big circle and mostly you play it with your hands or fingers, not with sticks.
wikipedia link for bendir, a video for bendir(guy talks in Turkish and teaches how to make it, but he also plays the instrument. You should watch it)
This was a very common instrument, but now a days people are forgetting those kind of analog instruments, cause using digital sounds makes producing music easier.
Once, I was talking to my father about my idea, and he asked me, how do I know this instrument? He saw it, first time, two years ago. I told him that, I was playing bendir in my band years ago. This was a big surprise for him.
My idea is, I really like sound of this instrument, it is meditating, by itself or with other instruments. I don’t want it to get lost in our digital culture.
So, I started to build an analog interface for bendir, which is controled by a software. I used solenoids and arduino for my physical interface. Basicly my starting point was, using a switch and something like a drum kick to play a bendir. So, I build my circuit and a wood kick with a solenoid.
As I said before, this is a prototype for the real project. Real one will be controlled by a software and kick are going to be different. I have to try it with different materials to get closer to sound made by finger.
