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.