I’ve been working with the Wiimote to build another free gesture controller, this time based on led finger tracking. You can check a small post of development here
Again the N.I.P. crew was together at STEIM (Amsterdam). This time around we concentrated essentially on theoretical thinking about performing with new media. A very good exercise was to build some mind maps and find out about the different issues that each one of us is concerned about.
One word that sticked to my mind was “fragility”. Is fragility what makes us interested in performance per se? Knowing that the performer is expressing his own thoughts and ideas into an improvisational scenario and that it can all just go wrong.
Of course it is easy to point that it could simply go wrong (or be bad) because the performer is not good enough, but we must also consider that the digital system itself is prone to misbehavior. The digital media should, in theoretical terms, be immune to error or failure, since machines should always behave the same, with certainty to them. Thus it should be controllable by definition, which doesn’t really happen.
I think it doesn’t happen because we’ve connected two worlds: digital and biological. The variability of the biological environment is automatically mapped onto the digital system and thus it becomes much more evident to us, performers, that we live in an environment full of chaotic functions, very distant from the digital precision. This is very visible if you simply take any analog sensor and connect it to some kind of digitizing device. Any sensor has noise to it. The digital values jump up and down. Our biological environment does so too.
Regarding the performer side, this indeterminacy adds up to the fact that we are makers and performers. By building our own instruments we must then learn how to use them. This is already a big step. An even bigger step is learning something that doesn’t always behave equally. And that makes it interesting! If we ever got to the totally deterministic response, maybe even us, performers, would loose some interest into exploring this media’s “experimental possibilities”.
But that leads to other issues, namely one that really strikes me as very important: Who is restricting who? (if the word “restriction” is applicable). Are we controlling machines and making them the instruments of our precise vocabulary or are they just restricting our creativity, blurring our expression?
Are we adapting to the machine’s behavior or is it adapted and designed around our own purposes?
These are very basic questions which I’m sure many of the researchers of this field have already addressed, but it is very good to see some of this discussion emerge in our own group.
We’ll keep commenting on these. Soon Teresa will have our mindmaps freshly distributed. I need to take another look at those! 
Some food for thought:
This is a self sufficient Arduino board, which is powered by harnessing solar power and using a 9V rechargeable battery. It is perfect for anyone who is interested in doing Arduino projects that do not require a computer or any power supply. You can take this to the most remote places for any project.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Self-Sufficient-Arduino-Board/
Cheers
Ivan
The Arduino team in Italy has just launched a blog for thoughts, news, and discussion with the Arduino team. This is a nice way to keep informed about new stuff. For you that don’t know arduino, this is basically an open-source platform for electronics development. It’s pretty easy and accessible.
Cheers
Ivan
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2007/07/tom-from-bugbrand-reclines-in-his.html
Man, you do look pretty cool with the lab coat on!
Cheers
Ivan
Some home brewed electronics for sound devices (0’s and 1’s, Tom!):-)
http://milkcrate.com.au/_other/sea-moss/
Index
Digital Logic
Binary Numbers
1’s and 0’s and Electricity
Logic Chips
40106
4040
4051
Sound Devices
Basic Equipment List
Oscillator
Arpeggiator
Sequencer
Amplitude Envelope Generator
Sequencer with Amplitude Envelope
Eight Stage One-bit Custom Waveform Generator
Eight Stage Custom Waveform Generator
Some of us discussed solar power and the possibilities behind it. Gizmodo is mostly commercial info on gadgets but they have a flag just for solar power things. There’s a couple of mats there…
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/solar/
I.
I’m playing the airstick tonight at the Lisbon Architecture Trienal.
It’s a nice event. Here are some links (sorry, some stuff is portuguese only but still there are always nice images…):
http://trienaldelisboa.sapo.pt/
http://trienal.blogs.sapo.pt/
Cheers
Ivan
Hi guys. I found this new PIC that is capable of some curious sound stuff…
http://oopic.com/soundgin/
The Soundgin is a serially controlled Sound Synthesizer in a PIC.
It produces complex sound effects, synthesizer style music and English speech with an unlimited vocabulary.
For use in manufactured electronics and home projects.
Now Shipping
Available in an 18-Pin DIP or SOIC package.
2.0 to 5.0 Volts Operation
16Khz Sample Output Rate
2400 or 9600 Baud Serial Connection
6 Independently Controlled Voices
Amp, Freq, Ring Modulation
Hard Sync.
ADSR Envelopes
Musical Notes
English Phonemes
Sound Morphing
Hey Nippers! Just wanted to say hello and thank you for all the good times in Amsterdam. I think a lot of foundations are being laid for really interesting work (ensemble anyone?? :-)). Anyways I’ll try post regularly. First I will try to share some conversations I had with Jorgen. My biggest problem with the current airstick design is related to the angle the beam of most infrared rangers. I doesn’t have a straight line beam but more of a cone, where every obstacle in the way will be detected. Of course sometimes this angle is not desirable. You can take a look at the sharp infrared rangers specification here:
http://www.acroname.com/robotics/info/articles/sharp/sharp.html
The workaround could be to make a little tube that would be placed at the end of the emitter lens and make the infrared beam narrower (maybe a straw cylinder, fused with a conic end). This would make the pulses bounce inside the tube.
Another issue is that I noticed some people needed an introduction to the basic electronics of building physical interfaces. There is tons of material on the web but a more comprehensive cookbook would be better to start with. Thus I recommend Dan O’ Sullivan’s resources. It’s an excellent book that pretty much touches all the initial subjects in a light approach:
http://www.physicalcomputing.com/
See ya!
Ivan
