The building blocks project has been, by far, the most complicated project I have ever tackled. At last, though, the completion of the project is near.

I have purchased these IPod Breakout boards to communicate with the mp3 players from Arduino. This makes the communication between the two pieces of hardware possible, so that when Arduino senses a change in the overall resistance of the box (i.e, when the box is being stacked or unstacked) it will trigger the IPod’s play or pause functions.

Also, I purchased some logic level converters to transform my microprocessor’s 5V to a nice ipod-safe 3.3V.

Here are some pictures to help map out my progress. Sorry for the poor quality photographs : )

First, a look at the components. Here we have the speakers I purchased from Digikey. At first, I thought I would need to make an amplification circuit because I presumed the sound coming out of these wouldn’t be powerful enough. Fortunately, I was proven wrong, and those 3W speakers are quite powerful! On the little board you can also see the ATTINY chip which will take care of the IPod and sensing if the box is being stacked on others or not.
**EDIT** I will be using multiple Arduinos instead of ATTINY chips. The chips do not enable me to install the Arduino communication protocols.

Here is the destroyed iPod (still works!) and hacked headphones. The iPod shuffle won’t be necessary anymore for the project, but the headphones will still be of use! I had to strip the wires, then carefully separate the innings from the protective coating, and weld the 4 resulting wires to electrical wires. These are then welded to the speaker.

And here is one of the boxes! They are made of Russian Plywood, 2 panels (sides) are 5″x5″ with three sides cut at 45 degrees, 2 other panels (top and bottom) are 5″x10″ and also have three sides cut at 45 degrees, and 1 panel (back) is 5″x10″ and all sides are cut at 45 degrees. I used linseed oil to add color, and I made holes with a drill where the wires are going to connect with the copper. I also made 3/8th of an inch grooves in the wood to fit the copper strips.

Here’s the inside with all the wires for the copper in place.

The copper strips were cut with the “guillotine” at the metal shop at Concordia. To weld on the strips, I had to get silver conductive epoxy (hot welding wasn’t holding) and regular epoxy was used to apply the strips to the wood.

After consulting a lot of people, it seems that the general consensus is that the sound should come out of the blocks instead of coming out from external speakers. This adds a huge amount of difficulties. Here are a few:

+ Sound: Now the sound must come out of an MP3 player. Unfortunately, MP3 cards are extremely expensive (around 80$ each). The cheap alternative is to hack low-cost MP3 players. I purchased 5 for around 100$.

+ Hacking: is hard…

+ Connectivity: I have to destroy headphones and make proper connectivity between the ipod, speakers and amp. It isn’t hard but is quite a long process.

+ Speakers: I purchased some speakers from Digikey for a pretty good price (35$ for 5). The difficulty here was to find low-cost speakers with good Wattage for good sound quality. I ended up buying 3W ones which is very good considering most laptop speakers are 0.5 to 1W.

+ Amplification: Ipods don’t make a lot of sound… And if the piece is presented in a public space like a gallery, chances are people won’t be able to hear anything if people are talking all around. A mini amp circuit for each speaker + ipod circuit had to be done.
**EDIT** After doing some testing with the speakers and the box (wood) amplification it seems I won’t be needing the circuit after all.

+ Design: The boxes were already cut and planned out, fitting a speaker in isn’t an easy task. I also need to make sure the LEDs don’t cast a shadow on the speaker.
**EDIT** The speaker fits snuggly flat on the back wall. The cone is facing the wood because I found that the material amplified the sound quite well.

+ Energy: The main problem is that the piece will only have a 3 hour “lifespan”. Afterward, the front will need to be unscrewed and the iPod recharged. This could be tackled in a version 2.0 of the project.

+ Programming: I have to change my entire code…

But overall the effect will be much nicer! And you know, I love a challenge : )

Also, here is a little list of what has been done and issues arising:

+ Sound recordings: 2 soundscapes have been recorded so far, 3 to go!
+ Photographs: 3 photographs were taken, 2 left for this weekend!
+ Metal: Copper was bought and cut at the metal shop. Extremely good connectivity with almost no resistance. Was worth the 50$!
+ Assemblage: I had to purchase some conductive epoxy to solder the wires to the copper… My pretty copper doesn’t like soldering at all!!
+ Wood: Wood was cut, grooves were made, varnishing was done.

Building Blocks from Claudine Lamothe on Vimeo.

Synopsis

Building Blocks is a project that focuses on collective memories, architecture and senses (touching, earring, seeing). Each box represents one architectural site located in Montreal that is or was in the near past in danger of being destroyed or forgotten, and this project serves as a medium to extend awareness about the beauty and ephemeral nature of these sites.

Technicalities

This is simply a prototype to demonstrate the interaction possible with the blocks once completed. For this version, foam board and white glue were used to make the boxes, aluminium tape used to create connectivity, and resistors of 100 Ohms and 1KOhms used in combination with wiring and electrical tape serve as a detecting mechanism. Also, I used thin wrapping paper during the presentation to hide the untidy insides of the boxes.
[ Download Circuit Sketch ]

As for the software side of the project, I used a combination of Max/MSP and Arduino to do the work.
[ Download Max Patch ] **Edited March 28th**
[ Download Arduino Code ]

Issues

The biggest issue I had was related to the prototyping nature of the project. Since foam board isn’t very heavy, connectivity between the boxes was very hard to achieve. Also, the conductivity of aluminium tape is not as good as with copper, for example, and there would be a lot of “noise” present in the voltage calculations. These two issues combined made it very complicated to calculate what was the voltage range for each box.

On another hand, I will also need to find a way to slightly change my Max patch. A problem with my If statements have made it impossible to play 2 samples at the same time, instead, during the presentation, I made a third, separate sample, that was the 2 first sound samples combined. This works, but isn’t the result I want.
**EDIT** This has been corrected, but the idea of using MAX/MSP for the project has been dropped. Please refer to more recent posts about the project for more information.

For some other descriptions of this project, please refer to previous posts

This is the circuit for resistance sensing I initially used. Changed quite a lot with time **Edited March 28th**

Description

Building Blocks is an interactive sound and visual project. The piece will consist of a few wooden boxes of two different sizes that the audience can stack together. When a box is in contact with another, it will activate a new sound level in the room, and trigger light patterns inside the box. Therefore, the more boxes are stacked, the more lights will blink, and the more complex the sound will be.

Also, each box will have on it’s front panel a photograph of where the sound sample attributed to the box was taken. It will be printed on acetate so that the lights located inside can shine through the more transparent sections.

Concept

Each photograph will feature a building that is part of the heritage of Montreal, and the sound sample attributed to it will be taken from that location. I feel that there is more than one meaning to this project. When explaining it to a friend he thought this was a statement against costly architecture projects that when “stacked up” make one nasty bill for us citizens. Some others saw more of an ode to beautiful architecture in our unique city.

To me, this project isn’t about it’s significance, it is about making objects that are visually appealing and offer a new level interactivity and creativity to others.

The reason why I chose buildings as a key part of this project was because of memories. My first concept was to use my own memories and display them in the boxes, but, after attending a few times an unpleasant performance class, I decided that my next few projects should stray away from me. Therefore, I decided that this work should be about collective memories, the memories of the city itself. Hopefully, people will be able to associate each photograph and sound with a personal memory.

Aesthetic

To make the boxes, I am using Russian plywood. It has a beautiful grain and, once sanded, looks very sophisticated. The dimensions for the big boxes will be 5″x10″x5″ while the smaller ones will be 5″ cubes.

On each sides of the box, except for the one with the photograph, there will be metal strips. They will all be connected on the inside to different components so that electricity passes through. one metal strip will be for the 5V, another for the ground, and another will be for the analog input. Henceforth, using this technique, it is possible to make this project work with no wires which will add to it’s aesthetic appeal as well as to it’s practicality.

The lights inside the box will be ultra bright white L.E.Ds. To diffuse the light, the inside of the box will be coated with shiny electric tape (other types of metal would be impossible to use because they would probably cause short circuits), and a layer of sand-blasted acrylic will be installed inside before the photograph.

Technicalities

This project has many levels, and that is why it will take a long time to realize. I am using Max/MSP for the sound aspects of the project, and micro chips for the lighting part.

Each box will have a resistor of a different value in it, connected to the ground, 5V and analog input metal strips in parallel. The first box to be stacked will always need to be put on a very thin platform that will be connected to Arduino. When Arduino senses that the resistance has changed from it’s initial value, it will calculate the difference and, therefore, will be able to determinate which sound to play. For example, let’s say that box1 has a resistance value of 50, while box2 has a value of 100. If Arduino senses that the resistance is now at 50 then it will play the sound sample 1. If it senses that the resistance is 100 then it will play sound sample 2. If it senses that it is at 150, then it will play the two samples at the same time.

The L.E.Ds will be connected inside the box to a microchip. When a box is in contact with another or with the platform, it receives 5V and the microchip goes on and starts the sequence with which is turns the L.E.Ds on and off. The sequence will be programmed independently to go with the sound sample of the box.

To do list

- Record sounds
- Edit sounds
- Order L.E.Ds
- Take photographs
- Edit photographs
- More to come