Entry 1 Entry 2 Entry 3 Entry 4 Entry 5 Entry 6 Entry 7

Entry1

journal week 1 ....soccersynthsalon,,,,, (three physcomp projects rolled into one involving interactive devices and programming) thing one, {the space}... in this project there would be a circular space approximately 60 feet in diameter, with a flat round floor sloping upward into a conical spheroid overhead. the top of the cieling would be about 30 feet high at it's zenith. the walls, floor and overhead of this chamber would be arrayed into sensory plates in various shapes and geometric configurations. the plates would, when hit or stepped on, produce tones and audio feedback tones that would resound throughout the chamber and fill up the space with rich and varied soundscapes. each plate would have a specific tone and color that would be activated whenever it's impact sensitive switch is struck. thing two, {the ball}... the ball itself would be a self-contained interactive audio recording and transmitting device. it would be powered by a dynamo that fed itself from jolts and jostles to the ball and would store excess energy in a battery. when kicked or struck by a wall or plate, the ball would respond accordingly with an appropriate audio tone and or pulse. clues about the ball's speed, trajectory, and orientation to the chamber would be displayed in the audio tone of the ball as it sped, bounced, and was hit around the chamber. thing three, {the suit}.... the suits worn during the match/session would also contain sensory devices such that audio frequencies and tones would be generated according to positions and actions inside the sphere. the legs and feet would be triggered by a set of switches so that all kicks and traps could produce signature sounds that would indicate force of strike, angle of spin, etc, all amplified by the speakersystem in the chamber and some in the ball itself. as a whole, the project could be used as a game, learning device, recreational tool, or any number of these at once. the sensory feedback plates on the walls, floor and overhead of the chamber would be linked up/programmed to produce a complimentary sound/light scape that would allow for a unique sensory experience. the building of repetetive patterns, complimentary visuals and frequencies, tonal harmonics, and cacaphony could all be used as the basis for a new means of expression and feeling. an educational or therepeutic aspect could be employed for differently-abled individuals who could learn to play even if lacking of one or more sensory abilities. additionally, letters or numbers could be built into the plates on the walls to enable language or math-related games or exercises. a learning tool, a recreational passtime, a performance piece, an audiovisual stimulation device, a language synthesizer, a new addition to the cole sports complex....all these and more. if i ever get my hands on a few hundred thousand dollars i will make one....!

Entry 2

journal 2 .....the towerboat sharkfin module... my first physcomp project was a hodgepodge mix of devices, switches, lights, and soundmaking stuff. it began simply enough as a series of LEDs linked through a set of photocells, in a row so that one could plot them along a line. from that it grew to include the following....a noisemaking motor, a buzzer, and a set of lights all rigged through a switch and regulated by a potentiometer. my favorite was the sharkfin which consisted of a photocell that was regulated by an LED inside a light proof housing. changes to the first LED would cause a second LED to change as a result of light inside the sealed photocell housing. fun stuff...looked cool too. i also ended up using the piece as a director/comp media program by manipulating digital images of the tower so that rollover commands and text flashes happened according to where in the stage you put the mouse or clicked something. i have been on the lookout for goodies in trashes more than i usually do these days. my searches have resulted in finding a bunch of switches, leds, potentiometers, a fan, and a motor for a record player. there are all kinds of nuggets to be found and applied to physcomp related projects.

Entry 3

journal3.....the chip and related tidbits.... we learned about the bx24 chip and how it is used , some things it can do, and it's possible applications. first off we fiddled around and had trouble getting it to do anything in class, (a sign of things to come for sure). after enabling the chip to be programmed, we could then set up switches for lights, message scrolls, etc, with the microcontroller being able to be unplugged from the serial cable and acting as it's own master. whatever the last program is, continues in memory. my first inkling after hooking up a set of lights was to regulate a motor with the chip, but i was informed that there are power issues to deal with, as the current through the chip is quite weak and incapable of making even a small motor work. for that week i hooked up a lLED array and had them sequenced, then mounted the whole contraption in a clockbox i found here at school. i suspect someone found it, brought it in then discovered the breadboard was too wide to fit it in, so they discarded it. i was able to remove one of the power ground lines from my breadboard and it fit (barely) diagonally. i like to put things in a different housing .after the first few euphoric weeks i had the reality check of chip trouble bring me down to earth. after some finagling and rewiring, i could not figure out why the chip was not responding to my commands, and, later, pleas. to make a long story short, i finally had to take everything apart, reduce my once proud and complicated breadboard to it's barren store-bought state and put my ailing chip away. finally, after having trouble-shot with for 15 minutes with tom, i followed his advice to perform voodoo on my chip, which turned out to be the right ticket. when i reassembled the procedure the next day it worked fine, and perhaps not only because the words VOODOO were flashed to the message window, but more in combination to the dance i had done the everning before. i was told that this was a rare but not uncommon occurrance, and have been asked to perform my dance on a few chips since then.

Entry 4

journal 4, canal street shop galore this week we took a trip to the canal street assembage of strange and wonderful shops that specialize in physcomp goodies. we visited the following shops, ,, space metal surplus, plastics, foam/rubber, plumbing supply, and whacky fan/motor/whatever the hell shop. a few more were pointed out including perl paints, a haven for artsupply and modeling goodies. it should be known that sunday is not a good day to go down there in searchof anything other that frustration, as all the cool shops are closed and all the fake gucci handbag ones are open. they are open on saturday but it is a bit of a chaos down there. as for the chip we learned how to use a second power source to activate a motor by way of a transistor, so that the inadequate power of the chip can be bolstered by that of a higher source. many people seem to be thinking of how to use this secondhand relay system to power projects, as the chip has enough power to

Entry 5

journal 5 ....the mathias and tim sensor group project (impact and jostle sensing devices) for our group project we decided early on to do something involving impact sensors, or more specifically devices that register car crashes, deploy airbags and restraint / safety systems. our initial conceptions of what they did (or acted like) were pretty far-off, and we ended up changing our search quite a bit. my idea was that there would be some "integrity value" that a bumper (or car body) would have, and when that integrity was compromised, the airbag would deploy. it turns out that the technology is pretty primitive for most airbag deployment devices, with a crude switch being smashed into the "on-position" during a crash. the most h-itech one we found was a "liquid body 6-axis accelerometer" that consisted of a silcon chamber filled with a liquid bodycore (mercury?) that could sense and register the speeding up, slowing down, pitch, roll, yaw, and assorted jostlings to a body that contained the switch. thay are produced for use in anything from airplanes, space craft (zeroG environments) to automobiles to gesture recognition software apparatus (virtual reality). we were unable to see any pictures of the 6-axis device but had a pretty good idea what it would look like from descriptions. in class we took apart a type of impact sensor after our presentation. it was from a ball that when struck or bounced, would flash LEDs for a few seconds and then shut off. in it was a small chip, two tiny batteries, and a "motion detector switch" comprised of a spring wound around a straight wire, which served to complete the circuit when the two wires touched. tim said that he had had the ball for a few years, and that the batteries had been sufficient to keep the ball going a long time. such a small current plus a chip that tells it to only stay on for a few seconds can make for a longlasting project. i am drawn to projects that have no connections to anything except f ro the person or stimulus that is interacting with it.

Entry 6

journal 6....the preperation for the mid term project during the last few weeks i have been getting ideas and creating prototypes for the midterm project. i knew early on that i wanted to make a sound device, and that the soundmaker itslef would be motors striking some object. i experimented with small lotors in synch with pot.s to make them harmonize or go out of phase. my motors (two * 1.5-3 v computer store ones) were initially mounted to a small piece of wood, and this was placed on a helmet-device i made from a discarded water jug. the sounds were produced partly by the speed of the motors and partly from small strips of cardboard i glued to them that stuck the wood mount. the helmet was to amplify the sounds and make them louder, as well as to keep it wierd. it did both. when i upgraded the size to two * 12 v motors, i was impressed by the volume increase, but dismayed by the lack of audible pitch control the smaller ones had afforded. something about the speed of the larger motors, or the vibrations they made, led to a lack of audible value i was looking for. though much more consistant in speed, they drowned out any harmonic tone i had with the smalled ones. with this in mind i decided that i would have to use smaller motors for my project if i was to get a finely audible tone difference. in class this week we continued to mess around with the chip and learned about relays, transistors, and of course how slowly the basic x program takes to do

Entry 7

journal 7 the mid term project "xyloklinger" the mid term project seemed to be a long way off not so long ago, but I looked forward to focusing on a challenge of soldering, experimenting, wiring and programming. With the basic template in my head to make a sound producing device I set out to create a xyloklinger. As I have always liked the idea of tone-generating projects but preferred the sound of analogue devices to that of digitally generated sound, I began hunting for a suitable apparatus of sound. While having abandoned the idea of creating a motor- based tone generater, (not loud enough and difficult to tune like an instrument), I opted for a motor-struck metal tube device and found some good piping at space surplus downtown. I was given some funny looks as I proceeded to test a dozen or so types of pipe in order to match tone with price range. I finally had to settle for a length of brass about 4 feet long, and even that set me back a pretty penny. The box I had found on the street a week or two earlier and immediately presented a perfect housing for whatever I would put together. (The box basically decided the project, as I was swimming with too many ideas from the get go…!) anyway, the pipes were cut to different lengths to give different tones and situated inside the box in a threesome configuration. I rigged them up with rubber bands as loosely as possible to give them the maximum freedom to make as much long-resounding tone as possible. Then came the task of setting up the strike-motors to make them sing, which actually turned out to the hardest part. The final result of wire appendages with small metal beads soldered on the tips was the end of a long process of trial and mostly error. The strikers had a tendency to fly off even when hot-glued, taped and wired to the motor arms. Given the speed of the small but quick 9volt motors, they were hard to keep in action for more than a few good sessions. I needed something that would be pliable to be acted-on by centrifical force but still strong enough drive the metal balls into the rods. Plastic ties, firm wire, shrink-wrap tubing, a dried hot-glue drool, a bolt soldered to the end of a string, all failed. The final champion combination was a length of medium gauge wire hot glued and shrink-wrapped to the end of the motor-shaft, with the metal ball( from my bracelet) soldered and affixed to the end at a distance slightly longer than the distance between the rod and the motor arm. After some finagling of the motors in the housing I achieved the analogue version of the xyloklinger that was operated by switches and had potentiometers rigged to each to adjust the speed or volume. One thing that didn't make the cut into the final was the pots, as they could be used only when the motors were turning. Below a threshold speed they would not start up again after being turned off. It was a sjhame because that was the original idea of using pots to regulate tone, whereas here they could be only used as a volume control and a poor one at that, so out they went. So with that I considered quitting and leaving it in the analogue stage for the presentation, knowing that the chip would make things more tricky and not nec more interesting, (unless you consider frustration interesting)… I had had some problems earlier as described before with voodoo glitches and no small amount of teeth gnashing. I imagine these problems to be quite frequent with the bx. At any rate I decided late in te game to rig the chip to control my xyloklinger with the use of photocells such that it could be played without touching it physically. The first step was to get some readings from photocells and determine what would be a good threshold to use as a cut off for turning the motors on. I was basically using the photocells in an inverse capacity such that with full light they would be off ,and when shadowed, would turn on. I then found that different gauges of wire (and even different proximities in the same room!?) have different resistance values. This was a foreseeable but time-consuming factor, as my reading would have to be calculated for each of the three cells and programmed separately. I chose the threshold values of 800, 900, and 850 for the adc levels, and if I had thoutght about it, would have put non-operator level potentiometers to adjust the tunings depending on the light in each place played. This was a retrospective thought, after I had already set everything up. Finally for power I had one 9volt battery for the chip through the 5volt regulator, and each of the motors had a separate 9volt battery through a transistor powering it depending on it's input from the chip. All in all a portable, pretty loud, self-contained, and operable device that looked rustically cool and sounded,,,, well, let's just say that I hope to make another more elaborate one that is actually tuneable, harmonious and playable like a more practical instrument. This was a prototype of sorts…and a fun one at that.