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 box, aluminium tape used to create connectivity between the boxes, and resistors of 100 Ohms and 1KOhms used in combination with wiring and electrical tape serves 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 ]
[ 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.

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

Licht stats by explaining that many artists or galleries describe a piece as being sound art when it actually isn’t. This is done to give legitimacy to an artist or a piece; if a work fails as a music composition, then by saying it is sound art will give it a certain artistic value, as well as making it more “museum friendly”. To best describe the difference between the genres, Licht explains that a pop music composition has a beginning, a middle, and an end, as well as being an “amusement park ride” with “thrills and chills”. On the other hand, sound art can be like a walk through a zoo, or through a fridge. It also has no true beginning or ending, and won’t try, like other genres of music, to capture the human essence.

Licht, afterward, continues to discuss what describes a sound art experience, talking about other aspects such as dance, light and synesthesia. He also looks more in depth at spatiality, visual effects, nature, technologies, noise, senses and sculptures.

After that, the Licht looks at how sound and music are related in the art world.

I was particularly interested in how Licht wrote about all these aspects of sound art. I have always tried to define the genre, and found that most text were hard to understand or wouldn’t go in depth enough. Moreover, I was impressed by how many artists were quoted, and how many pieces are included in pictures or descriptions in the text.

Hollis Sound Garden
Jullius
Leitner
Marclay
Electrical walks

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

The graphic notations I did before were very literal. This time I decided to represent the ambient flow of my sound sample.

Want to read what others say?
http://www.iheartpigeons.com/projects/amplify/index.php

Description
This small performance project uses technologies (PHP, MySQL, xHTML, CSS) to project unto an urban environment feelings and thoughts of others. When someone enters text unto a web form, it gets added to a database. The presentation page collects the data and generates a random font-size and background color for each message, and every 10 seconds it “spices things up” changing the attributes again.

The name of the project is “Amplify Yourself” and it reflects who I am. As an artist, I love technologies, communication and architecture.

Some aspects of synesthesia are similar between synesthetes, however, the experience remains strongly personal. No two synesthetes will see the same color patterns and forms when listening to the same music. Also, one of the characteristics of synesthetes is that there is no way that they can “turn off” the visual associations, they can only be sent “to the background”.

After looking at characteristics of synesthetes and of their experiences, the text then looks at ways one can turn those visuals into physical manifestations. For example, an organ was invented which, instead of controlling sound, controls color tone, saturation and lightness of lamps. This was one of the ancestors of more elaborate light performances that effects modern musical performances. The result of such shows are the unification of the arts as well as the enhancement of the musical experience when accompanied with light. Also, synesthesia was the inspiration for many artists to create pieces with light and movement.

Links
Wikipedia
Seeing Music
Berlin club with amazing color/light effects [bad video... sorry]
Lights On
Daft Punk’s awesome light shows. When I read about “lines” and “colors” I thought of this immediately.