PComp Midterm: Liquid Sounds

Assignment: Create a project with interactivity that ideally uses serial communication between a microcontroller and computer. Daniel Fries and I collaborated on this assignment.

Idea: Daniel and I chose to collaborate together to build an instrument. Beyond knowing we wanted to make some sort of instrument, we entered the brainstorming phase with a pretty blank slate. Some recurring themes in our brainstorming included the concept of scrubbing through granules of sound, analog tape as either an aesthetic or as an actual mode of playback and playback controlled by walking in physical space. We knew we did not want any screens involved and wanted to make a very physical experience for the musician; we also wanted there to be a process of discovery for the musician to learn the affordances and nuances of the instrument. It would not need to be immediately apparent what produced sound, and what qualities of sound were possible.

We landed on using the idea of mixing liquids to control different parameters of sound. We imagined our users mixing cocktails with different outcomes depending on the particular proportions of spirits and mixers used— among other applications.

Process: Our initial plan was to place 3 glasses in a fabricated wooden enclosure and have a mixing bowl outside of the enclosure. We wanted to put load sensors under each glass/bowl to sense the amount of weight in each one, then program conditions that either changed sounds depending upon hitting particular thresholds of weight or conditions that changed continuously as weight changed.

We placed our order for 4 load sensors on Thursday. The assignment was due the following Wednesday and the sensors were supposed to arrive on Saturday. By Tuesday morning, we still did not have the sensors in-hand. Once we did get them, our worst-case scenario played out: the sensors did not behave as we had expected.

It turns out that 4 load sensors need to be used in-concert to form a Wheatstone Bridge circuit. We expected to be able to use just one load sensor to pull signal from the glass above it, even if that signal was only directionally correct. Once we discovered that this would not work, and it would be both time-and-cost prohibitive to make this approach work, we shifted to a different plan.

We had already fabricated our enclosure and written pseudocode before the sensors arrived; we needed a suitable alternative for the load sensor. Luckily, it turns out Force Sensing Resistors can pick up something akin to weight; and given that we only needed a directional reading, they were a fine alternative. We borrowed FSRs from classmates, soldered longer wires to them, and tested different setups with our enclosures to make sure they could pick up signal as our glasses filled with liquid.

Once we got them working well enough around 9:30pm, we switched to turning our pseudocode to real code in Tone.js. Daniel had experience writing musical instruments in Tone.js; although our initial plan was for me to drive the code section so that I could ramp up my skills, we ultimately had to have Daniel take more control (although we still sat together and talked through all of the code during the process) for the sake of time.

Reflections:

At the end of the day, our instrument worked and drew good responses from users who got to listen to + play the instrument. However, if we had our hands on sensors sooner, we could have finished a working prototype in time to work through details in the enclosure and the sound generation to make this a truly interesting musical device that we could continue to perform with. We’ll take that as a learning lesson moving forward in our physical computing projects.

(Im)permanence and Fabrication

Assignment: For this final fabrication assignment, we were asked to build something with a motor. The main fabrication skill to focus on was mounting the motor. Any of the conceptual or interactive work was secondary to motor-mounting, but given that we were all going to have time to present to the class, it was important to me to think about the audience experience.

Stories and Inspiration:

Two anecdotes. First:

Back in 2013 I spent a month in Ladakh, a town in the Indian Himalayas. While there, I visited a number of monasteries. On of of those visits, I spoke with a monk who had just finished raking stones into a pattern. The courtyard we were standing in was windy and rocks were already shuffling out of place. I asked the monk about this practice of raking the rocks; if the rocks were going to be out of order within moments, why do it each morning?

The monk replied by calling my attention to the window out of the courtyard. The monastery stood upon a cliff, high up on a mountain jutting out into a valley. It was exposed to all of nature’s elements, including the wind that we were now feeling. “This mountain will be destroyed,” he said matter-of-factly, “and that is why it was built here. It serves as a daily reminder that even that which we hold most sacred will not last.”

Second:

I’ve been fermenting a lot of food and trying to learn about food cultures around the world. Although the specific pickling and preserving techniques vary wildly not only across countries but within them, the biological principles we use to ferment are similar. At its philosophical core, too, we’re doing something similar: we’re harnessing decay. We’re recognizing the impermanence of our food materials and seeing an opportunity to embrace change— to make something new of the old.

I wanted to reflect on these two anecdotes through this project and bring my classmates into this reflection with me.

Idea:

I told my classmates the story from the monastery and asked them to reflect on three questions:

1) What is something that feels permanent in your life

2) What is something that feels important now but you know will not be later

3) Make a prediction for 30 years into the future

I then passed out pieces of orange peel and markers to my classmates and asked them to write at least one of their answers on those pieces. Then, they placed these pieces on a conveyor belt— the fabrication project— which dropped into a container. I poured layers of cement over the pieces of organic matter (I added some pieces of cheese and also passed out paper to write answers upon in addition to the orange peel.)

Some photos from the demo, then fabrication notes and reflections after the jump.

Fabrication: I cobbled together pieces from Brunos, Home Depot and (mostly) Jake and Noah — a million thanks to them! The conveyor belt used a motor with a 100 rpm gearbox, but 2000+ rpm motor — there was a lot of torque at the slow speed, which is useful for a conveyor belt. I built the frame and motor mount with scrap wood from the shop and wood screws to keep things in place. The belt itself was held together with some zinc-plated pipes and shaft couplers-like pieces to secure the pipes in place (this isn’t the right term; I’ll edit when I find the right one.) After testing with tape (taped to itself) and cardboard to no avail, I finally made the belt from a bunch of rubber bands. It actually proved to be quite effectively and looked nice to boot.

Improvements: I began this project the day before it was due, which was a nightmare. I knew what I wanted to build, but was waiting on parts for most of the week, and also just made the calculation that I needed to get other assignments done first and could get this one together in time for class. It led to a lot of running to the hardware store, a lot of shoddy craftsmanship, but ultimately a demo that I was happy with. I’d like to do this over again with better materials and more attention to the quality of fabrication; all of the screws should be flush, all of the holes for the zinc pipes big enough for good belt rotation, I should get the right sized pieces of wood (or something else the next time around) to make the whole setup more efficient.

For the demo, I’d like to experiment with different organic materials and different concrete molds. I may tweak the questions as well. Overall, I liked that my classmates seemed engaged and appreciated the opportunity for reflection; I think there’s a path to making this engaging for another audience.

Coconut Goblet of 🔥

This week’s assignment was to fasten at least two different materials together, not including plywood or acrylic.

As I brainstormed ideas early in the week, I kept returning to food. I want food-as-a-medium to be a central theme in a number of projects during my time at ITP. This time around, I was considering making something like a rack to hold mason jars full of fermentations. I was considering making something that made it easy to slide on cheesecloth over the neck openings in the early days of the fermentation, then easily replace the cloth with the regular mason jar lids, with the potential to put sensors and wires into the jars as well (something I’d like to do with PComp eventually.) So— this would be making something to hold something that treated food as a medium.

As I was working through design ideas, I quickly switched gears to go back to using food as a central medium in the piece itself. I decided to use a coconut shell — which I thought would have similar properties to a soft wood, but still present unique learning opportunities for this week’s assignment.

What could I do with the shell? With its natural curvature, it lends itself well to being a bowl or cup. Instead of going far afield, I decided to make a cup. I just broke one of mine, so I’m in the market for another :)

The main design constraint I gave myself here: I wanted to be able to unscrew/detach the coconut bowl from the stem for easy cleaning.

Behold: the Coconut Goblet of 🔥:

So, did this meet the assignment criteria? Yep— this had a few different materials and fasteners:

• Coconut to metal

  • I used the “tool of the week,” the tap and die, to thread a metal rod, which I used as the stem of the glass. The thread feeds into a hole in the base of the coconut, atop which I screwed on a 1/4-28 in threaded metal cap. It doesn’t fit perfectly snug, which thwarted my plan for the cap to close off the hole from any liquid.

• Rope to metal

  • I wrapped the stem of the wineglass in rope, which I sealed with a knot on the bottom end and some hot glue on the top end. Shoutout to Noah for the rope and the hotglue idea, which he used in his project.

• Coconut and metal to concrete

  • I used a sliced piece of the coconut shell for the base of the glass. I needed to seal off once side of the coconut in order to attach the stem; after considering using laser-cut acrylic, I decided to go a different route and pour in quick-mix concrete. Shoutout to Jake for the idea and pointers along the way.

  • The concrete took about 5 minutes to harden and fit the mold nicely without getting stuck to the tape that I used to keep everything contained inside the coconut. I used a helping-hand tool to keep the stem in place while the concrete set, and it came out straight.

Although I think this goblet is kinda fun, and something I could potentially bust out during a tiki-themed cocktail party, it isn’t quite functional yet. A bit of liquid still leaks through the hole in the coconut cup. I tried to seal off the bottom with hot glue; it’s an incremental improvement over nothing, but it doesn’t eliminate all leakage. A different kind of sealer might work better, but if I want to be able to unscrew the top of the glass for easy cleaning, I would need to avoid sealers that would keep the cup permanently attached to the stem.

I might be willing to bend on that design constraint just so I can drink a banana justino cocktail out of it.

Coconut base taped up and ready to receive concrete

Testing out how the quick concrete would set

Using the tap and die to create threading in metal rod

Finishing the coconut goblet with rope around the stem

Yeezy Boost Midi Controller Enclosure

This past weekend the internet was abuzz as Kanye West held listening parties in New York, Detroit and Chicago for an upcoming album, meant to be released on Sunday but yet to be seen. For much of my life, Kanye’s music and approach to creative output has been inspiring — and as Yeezy Season approaches, I remembered that I had kept the box for a pair of shoes I purchased a year ago. Seems like an appropriate time to put it to use.

For this project, I decided to start building a MIDI Controller out of the shoebox. I’m going to be working on the wiring and Arduino programming this week to ensure the piece is functional. For now, I prototyped the buttons and knobs.

When I work on the next set of steps, I know I’ll need to do a couple of things to ensure the knobs and buttons work properly, both electrically and vis-a-vis user experience: 1) place a firm platform underneath the buttons so that they click when pressed 2) Screw potentiometers through a second, thick piece of cardboard placed inside of the box to ensure the knobs turn properly.

I’ll likely create the platform mentioned above with acrylic in standoffs, creating housing for the circuit board and wires that will all live in the inner shoebox. I may need to further alter the inner shoe box to ensure that it doesn’t bump into mounted items when pulled out of the larger box.

Make 5 and Philosophy

First, the assignment, and then, the weirdness.

This week in Intro to Fab, we were asked to make 5 of something using more than 1 technique for the repeated item. The goal was to think about repeatable processes— things like clamp setups and jigs, among others.

I made 5 rings for a “Tower of Hanoi” game.

They’re different sizes, but all used the hole saw attachment on the drill press. I mistakenly did not attach the center hole drill bit, so I also had to set up a system for drilling holes in the center of each ring. Afterwards, I sanded each of the pieces, first a bit on the belt sander, then manually. Finally, I coated each of the rings in black paint then drew a character across them (pictured later.)

I didn’t quite succeed in the core purpose of this assignment. I don’t think the processes I used were as thoughtful and repeatable as they could have been. In the crush of the week, I think I ended up locking in to a concept rather than really focusing on the intent of the assignment. I could have more thoughtfully rigged up a system for precisely sanding the rings, drilling holes and even cutting/sanding the corners on the game board.

With that said, I did end up using all of the equipment in the shop and even made it out to Reuse to pick up wood. And in the process of making my assignment, I rediscovered a line of philosophy that I really enjoyed way back in the day in undergrad, a good 12-13 years ago!

The Game

As a little kid, we had a couple of wooden tabletop games that I vividly remember. One of them was a game that I now know is modeled after the Tower of Hanoi mathematical puzzle. The goal is to move all of the rings in the tower from their starting dowel to another one, one ring at a time, with the bigger rings never on top of smaller ones.

The goal is to do it in as few moves as possible— which, spoiler alert, winds up being 2^n -1 where n is the number of rings on the board.

I added an additional component — reconstruct the character on the rings as well.

The inspiration

What’s the deal with the character and board decorations?

It starts with a line of philosophy focused around the “continuity of consciousness” — in other words, how do we define what a mind and/or a body is *over time.* I remember discussing this during Philosophy 101 back in undergrad as part of a broader unit on the theory of mind, free will and simulations.

First, a couple of thought experiments (for a more expansive set of thought experiments, this blog post is solid.) For each of these, think: in which case is your mind and/or body continuous throughout the whole scenario:

1) You enter a teleportation device and immediately are sent to another location

2) You enter a teleportation device, then a month later, you appear in another location.

3) You enter enter a teleportation device which sends you to another location one atom at a time.

I’ll let you ruminate on the answers. Maybe I’ll share some thoughts on my answers in a later post or addition to this one. But for now, let’s just leave it as a thought experiment that inspired the drawings on the game. The character in the game is in scenario 3, being sent one piece at a time to another part of the board — the past, present or future.

PowerPickle

Ever wonder why you can’t just take a cucumber with you on a hike and use it to light up your path after it gets dark?

No?

Is it because cucumbers don’t light up?

If that’s the only reason you didn’t ever have this thought before, you’re in luck! Introducing, the PowerPickle:

Ok, yeah, the casing needs some work and yeah, that green light probably won’t light up much, and yeah, once you take a bite of your cucumber, the circuits will fall out and yeah, it’s going to dry up and maybe rot pretty quickly. But… let’s not dwell on the negatives, let’s talk about how this got built!

I knew what I wanted to make: a vegetable (any kind) that had a switch to turn it on and shine some light out of the top. Beyond that, all I knew is that I needed a battery, some wires, a lightbulb, and some kind of switch to embed into the vegetable. I looked up “electronics store” on Google Maps and saw that the Tinkersphere was nearby. Walking in, I knew that this place would probably become a regular visit. Good thing it’s right next to one of my favorite ramen places, https://mrtakaramen.webs.com/.

Once I got the parts, I headed into the ITP studio and set up my circuit. I didn’t initially realize that a switch just conveyed positive charge, so I spent a few cycles sending smoke into the air while essentially shorting the circuit. After some googling, however, I realized how simple this circuit is.

I got the light to turn on with just the batteries and switch. Then, I went to Whole Foods, bought a few kinds of cucumbers and zucchinis of different sizes— both vegetables that would be big enough to hold the electronics and easy enough to hollow. When I got home, I started carving the cucumber.

The circuit stopped working when I initially put it inside the cucumber. After a little testing, it became clear that the problem was with the contacts— I needed my wiring to more solidly and consistently make contact with the lightbulb, switch and batteries. I taped everything up, which did the trick. Then, I crammed the circuit into the cucumber— in the future, this could have been done a bit more elegantly as well, probably with just a bit of tape. This time around, I just wanted to get the PowerPickle to work!

It did work, although the enclosure for the switch started to widen as I fiddled with it. At the end of this experiment, I tried using toothpicks to fasten the top of the cucumber/head of the flashlight back to the body, which sort of worked, but would probably loosen quickly. Another area to improve upon.

Author’s note: I cut my fingernails immediately after seeing the picture above^