There is a slight difference in the v1.4 due to a manufacturing glitch.
The boards still work the pinout is just flipped.
The pins are odd / even as opposed to even / odd.. see below.

Back side of dock connector v1.2
02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
01 03 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

Back side of dock connector v1.4
01 03 05 07 09 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29
02 04 06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30

That means that their data sheets are completely outdated for the new versions of the boards. Now back to work! :)

Sound and space go hand in hand, after all, “sound is a sound in a space” (P. 40). Sound is also closely related to the physicality of human beings, which can also be defined as a space. All these attributes fit into the “architecture of noise”.

Just like modern architecture, sound should have freedom of movement, and it should also be of a beautiful simplicity. The author takes for example the works of Wright and Le Corbusier, where buildings are one with nature and stripped to a beautiful simplicity. This offers freedom for humans, as well as sounds, to navigate without confronting structure.

The author also explores the ideas of sound composed of chaotic balance, just like how the world is composed. One of the subjects he focuses on is musique concrete, which explored technological aspects of music making as well as the elasticity of sound. This also relates to architecture on many levels. Society from the 40s and 50s was going through a period of time where technologies were spreading through all aspects of cities, households and human beings.

Musique concrète
Artificiel’s Condemned Bulbs piece is always reworked to offer the best quality of sound possible in a space. It also focuses on technologies, architecture, and sound in a modern society.
Time magazine’s article on Le Corbusier. Has very interesting information on how he approached his work and what inspired him.
Evolving sonic environments in architecture

In today’s urban cities, exterior walls are covered with large screen displays, projections, neon signs and billboards. Urban Screens looks at this new media that is mostly used for corporate needs and retraces it’s history, as well as the technologies and politics that surround it.

One of the key concept discussed in the text that interested me the most was how new technologies have an extended impact on society, i.e. how they are now “embedded in the larger societal, cultural, subjective, economic, imaginary structurations of lived experience and the systems within which we exist and operate.” (P. 34). The text discusses how politics are involved and transformed on a large scale with the advent of technologies like the internet. More precisely, this technology can make national and international level politics available to anyone, and therefore brings politics to a “street level”.

This same concept can be applied to religion and economic. The digital makes us all interconnected and “borderless”.

Specifically, I feel like the advance spread of media culture to the streets has helped in the spreading of capitalist ideals. That is why I believe that art should also spread to the streets, just like it has spread over the years to the internet and other technological media. Art should always be present where boundaries are crossed, to educate people and to put a halt to corporate endeavors that “go too far”.

Really nice project by Graffiti Research Lab to stop the increasing spread of street media advertisement in NYC
In the category of street art, one of my favorite artist who re-appropriated the city.
The Guerilla Marketing page from Wikipedia is quite interesting
… and the wikipedia page on Street art has interesting pictures of old street art like this one from 1980
Finally, this might not fit into “art” but it’s still urban interventions made interesting

Here is the powerpoint presentation I made about Artificiel.

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.

+ 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

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