Tech Problems solved

This post celebrates my arduino and sensor success!! I cannot believe how such a simple thing has cost me so much time. I bought my sweet little arduino mini and tiny ET looking sensors almost a month ago. I have just this minute got them to output data into Max. I had problems with the arduino software- I now feel I am quite familiar with it after quite abit of troubleshooting on the forum and with Jamie and Lawrence at the conservatoire. There is still one issue- Lawrence did mention this tbh - the input data does seem to fluctuate even though I (carefully) soldered on a 100uF capacitor onto the sensors power and ground. I am going to ask Lawrence what value capacitor he used to solve the problem. If not, I am sure there is a max object that can smooth it. If I use Max! Jamie was showing us a few things in PD that looked really interesting. Although I'd better use Max now because if I changed my arduino set up to work with PD I don't trust it to work again!! Another project for PD perhaps.

I have been looking into using some information from a motion capture system. I have been doing some research and have found that I can input 4 firewire cameras into a computer using a hub and plan to map the input so certain areas of the image can effect the sound output- I feel I am getting closer to a system that will allow the 'sculpting' of sound in space by combining the sensor data and motion capture. I have been looking at a few Jitter objects to this. Now I intend to talk to Greg about what resources I have and how I can experiment with them.

Also I have been thinking about my lasers- it seems that green lasers are better than red lasers in being able to see the beam. I am looking into gettin g some to some the IR beam visually.

Tech problems

I have been trying to set up 4 IR sensors to output to an arduino board- a simple enough operation but it has taken me weeks to get to this point. Now it doesn't work. The arduino board has completely died! I have wasted so much time tralling through forums etc I am starting to panic that I will have done nothing at all by the assessment. I have also spent alot of time reading and writing my contextual essay. I has been very beneficial because I have found quite a few works similar to mine and the theoretical analsis of them has been really interesting. Messa Di Voce, Very Nervous System, and more recently Mark Titchners Run, Black River, Run (see Picture above) have been really inspiring. In Mark Titchner installation which I went to see at the baltic- the piece is really powerful, The sheer awesomeness of it, to me, expressed how small we are in relation to these big companies (or authorities as I like to relate it) The video installation was visually very powerful for reasons I'm not going into atm, but the sound (similar in all his works I have now discovered) was mesmerising/unsettling/hypnotic, I obviously already liked the use of the mechanical voice in the piece, and it was interesting to hear how he had got the mechanical voice to sound hypnotic. Maybe it was the evolving sort of synthy sounds that looped around with the vocals that was causing the mesmerising effect or just the fact that the vocals were going around in a loop and after a while a rhythm would appear to the listener. I found this very interesting - I you place patterns deep into a piece and loop it will these 'hidden' patterns/rhythms emerge after a while of listening??
Anyway, meanwhile, I have been gathering some sounds- I recorded my own computer talking in a few different voices. I also wanted to capture electrical hum - So I sat next to my rather noisy fridge and recorded that. I have been gathering robot sounds and electrical equipment sounds (microwaves/beeps/internet dial up) I also have spontaneously recorded anything that sound interesting, loaded sound such as lighting a match or a gas hob. I will compose a montage to see what sort of tone/sound environment I can make from these sounds. I intend to talk to Lamberto about musical form to help me do this.

The Mechanical Voice

The sound material that will be represented could be in the form of a mechanical voice. I felt that the mechanical voice would embody the suspicion of the attitude of societies mistrust toward the ‘dangers’ of technology. The mechanical voice is alarming to us because it displaces language as a human communicative tool. A relational device from using the idea of the phenomenological ‘I’ speaking from its interior- via an exterior medium to the exterior of another in order, to communicate interior relations to its interior. The mechanical voice speaks from the object of which there is no phenomenological ‘I’ and thus questions the internal mirror of humanity and the self defined presence. Communication begins in the mind- as social activity ultimately from mind to mind. Mechanical objects certainly do not have minds, and therefore, the mechanical voice (as singular representation or sound event) would be borne of nothing! If mechanical objects were able to perceive the phenomenology of ‘I’, learn of its own presence (as a mechanical object), possess human intelligence would prove the mechanical vocal output is borne of an interior. Speech always supplies social and cultural tracing individuality intrinsically enacts and a machine possessing this kind of human intelligence and individuality would point towards either chaos and the lack of a soul, or the (hardly credible notion) that machines could possess a soul. The mechanical voice irrationally evokes the notion that our own humanness ‘could’ be disproved.

By using voices in the performance to be manipulated by the spatial gestures of the generator could be suggest that the generator is conjuring the mechanical voice and emitting them from his or her body, this would be less alarming as the voice would take on the interior of the performer and his or her human characteristics instead of suggesting that mechanical objects have minds, or in a very surreal way the voice invisibly inhabits the space and they are ‘talking’ to the generator and he/she is communicating back.