I. CapSense with Graphite and Copper
I had success using graphite as a capacitance sensor (using this Arduino playground CapSense library) and was also able to differentiate between pages using different resistors to establish a base resistance as a ’signature’ for each page. After seeing what people drew on their pages, however, and after testing around six pages together, I ran into two problems a) not everyone used graphite, and b) the capacitance sensor is just too finicky for me to establish over 26 rows of pages right now. This has been my problem with capacitance sensors in the past: changes in air humidity, the wind, the way you look at it, seems to require a re-calibration every time. Luckily, because I’m layering sounds, I don’t need exactitude, but I won’t have time to finesse a pairing between unique pages and corresponding sound files.
So for now, I’m working on hooking up the metal book-binding rows to multiplexers-to-Arduino-to-MacMini with stored files. The electronics will be housed in a book stand that the metal book-spines will snap latch onto to connect the circuit.
II. MP3 Trigger
I played with the really sweet MP3 trigger last week, but realized a tad late that I couldn’t play multiple audio samples at the same time (note to self: READ description of applications carefully before trying shit). Nonetheless, this is a really nice device to play and loop MP3s, and I found these two documentation sites particularly helpful: from the Garage of Evil and Dave Miller’s ITP blog.
III. OpAmp (LM358)
I had a lot of fun in Basic Analog Circuits working with this dual op-amp (I didn’t have the right capacitor or potentiometer so had to fiddle around with resistors instead).
To get audio output, I used Tom’s TIP120 schematic and hooked up a hallmark card speaker to it. At the time I was still playing with paper speakers as well but turned away from this set-up when I realized that the polymer piezo’s I wanted to use sounded like CRAP.
IV. LM555 timer for audio
Out of curiosity, I played with the LM555 timer which I became excited about after seeing these videos of a 555 square wave generator and the http://hackaday.com/2011/01/10/555-based-am-radio-transmitter/. Here’s an audio schematic for the 555, and the data sheet that Eric Rosenthal gave us.
Blinking a few LEDS w/ the timer was quite thrilling, as you can imagine, but I also realized that square waves was not the sound I wanted to generate from my book.
CONTENT: scheduling
Private: Interviews & recording (negotiating privacy); Give materials to people and let them create
Gathering: create and record together
THESIS: late 14c., “unaccented syllable or note,” from L. thesis “unaccented syllable in poetry,” later “stressed part of a metrical foot,” from Gk. thesis “a proposition,” also “downbeat” (in music), originally “a setting down or placing,” from root of tithenai “to place, put, set,” from PIE base *dhe- “to put, to do” (see factitious). Sense in logic of “a proposition, statement to be proved” is first recorded 1570s; that of “dissertation written by a candidate for a university degree” is from 1650s.
I. Thesis Statement
For my thesis experiment I’d like to create a paper (book) sculpture which can mix and play audio in recombinatory ways depending on how one moves the paper. The question I’m approaching with this project is how can I make a book site-specific, where does a book take place? The heart of this question arises from my attachment to books during my childhood when I moved around a lot and when the consistent friends and environments I had were the books I carried with me. Books have always represented an imaginary space and time that I could access from anywhere, and mostly anytime (I used to have a system where I could read while taking a shower). Moreover, the medium itself offered an ability to access narratives both linearly and randomly by simply turning pages, which always gave me an inexplicable sense of pleasure and security.
There are definitely more qualities about books that I have in mind, but for now, suffice to say that I’d like to connect this narrative experience with a specific site: the ocean-beach. (The actual ones I have in mind are not close by so I might have to take a trip or find another option such as a local beach). Sea sounds constitute some of the most visceral experiences I’ve had with the sea and I’d like to connect the book sculpture with the sea, and seashore, by tying page movements with the sea’s sound scape. This relationship offers a way to juxtapose two temporalities and spaces, to be both site-specific and transitional. Eventually, I’d also like to explore a writing aspect. Even simply leaving the pages blank to write on will create an interesting texture and experience. But an avenue to also consider is how the sea could both speak and write to the book by analyzing sea waves and its sound waves and recording it into the book.
II. Process
The aesthetics of this project will depend very much on the materials, and I’m very excited to start working with the following tools and forms:
pop-up books
origami constructions
soft circuit materials such as paper, conductive inks and threads
c) Of course, I’ll be playing with all sorts of different types of paper shapes and experimenting with what I can construct out of different types of paper:
d) I’ll also be experimenting with recordings, both in terms of recording sea sounds as well as what types of interesting imprints we can make on paper. Paper Tattoo
site-specific relationship: how can you make a book site-specific?
obsession with language, writing, paper, and weaving
the sea
For me working an installation is working in relation to a particular place. You’re coming in and you’re in some sense animating the space, and you don’t know what that space or situation will do to you, or vice-versa, what you will do to it. Like you make yourself blank so you can pay attention to what comes up, what it makes you think of, what it makes you feel. All those ways that your skin is an organ, and the membranes are incredibly smart. Immediately you walk through any threshold and… you smell, you feel the temperature and the light and all those things that have enormous influence.
…thinking of the border that’s between the liquidity of the water and the solid ground. And the churning edge that always is and that edges are always conflicted or fraught places. And perhaps the most conflicted and fraught is the one that’s formed by the largest organ of our body, which is our skin and that makes, creates, an interior that’s always in relationship to an exterior. And I think that it’s really out of that border or edge that the work really forms.
