Latest revision as of 18:56, 11 March 2013

A PiezoFlower Arrangement

by Yoo Hsiu (Yoo-Yoo) Yeh

for Music 250b: Interactive Sound Art

Winter 2013

Week 10: PiezoFlower Box!

Bought a big sheet of wood at Home Depot and made... a BOX! Last week I had a basket from Costplus, but I felt it was too tall and unstable.

Also soldered a new set of "mixing" resistors and a more consistent set of audio jacks.

And switched back to the Paxton Gate vase, because it really is much nicer to not have a wire coming back out the top, something that Sasha had suggested many weeks ago. So I hot-glued the vase sideways to the BOX, and tried to un-hot-glue it, and cracked it on the side. Let's hope it holds until after Modulations.

Here's a photo of the new setup! Not quite done yet, but going for a kind of Zen, tilted feeling. Because they are kind of meditative.

And a Video: Lily and Orchid with Reverb

Week 9: PiezoFlower Arrangments, Issues

Bubble guns are too messy. So ... back to the drawing board.

Got lots of nail polish from Sasha -- and nine hours of nail polish, super glue, and solder fumes later (didn't really need those brain cells anyway~), I present to you:

Lily, Sunflower, and Orchid

Sunflower is having a bad hair day. :)

They are sent separately to two channels, for a more interesting effect. On left channel: Orchid flower and Lily On right channel: Orchid leaf and Sunflower Lily resonates the most.

The piezos are "mixed" by placing a 1kOhm resistor in series with each piezo, then connecting the resistor ends together and feeding that into the audio line. Tried to get an op-amp working for a more official adder circuit, but it was late and my brain didn't want to work.

Played around some with the guitar effects pedal. The default one actually sounds really nice. Setting #52.

Right channel occasionally drops out. Will have to debug this next week.

I also put a piezo disk inside an eggshell (yes, inside), which you can see in the photo of Lily, but that actually does not make a very interesting sound - no particular resonance. And it is extremely fragile. So shelving that idea for now.

Week 8: PiezoFlower Garden, v.1 and v.2

This is a productive week! Today installed happy flower and spiky beautiful sound flower into their vases, with the help of some paperclips from Jonathan and lots of hot glue. Hot glue may rise up to rank in usefulness with zipties. :)

Eoin found a song using the slinky on top of happy flower's vase. Thanks to Samanthi for the leaves. They have proven very useful.

Here's some closeups of the first two installed flowers. Videos to come.

(Edit: hanging vases have arrived, and they are quite beautiful!) Also arrived: the small piezofilms from Digikey, which may fit better inside the hanging vases.

Additional variations, more soldering of audio jacks, piezo discs hooked together in parallel.

Vases from Paxton Gate coming in tomorrow. Bought a terrarium from Costplus World Market in the meanwhile, and filling it up and blowing bubbles at it! With or without the guitar effects, both have very interesting sounds.

Video: the "garden" so far, before placement in the terrarium

PiezoFlower Garden Boom Video

Jonathan says the low pitch of the flower petals may be related to quarter wavelengths. Maybe I can make a smaller flower and test this out! In any case, here's the latest iteration:

Week 6-7: Looking for those hidden sounds

Acquired 30 additional slinkies/magic springs from Anya. Bought some more of my own. Ordered some online. Of varying sizes and shapes.

Actually building things - Sasha said I could cut up the sheet metal in the lab, and handed me a hot glue gun. I had previously been thinking of plastic or paper leaves/petals. Also lent me a guitar effects pedal. So we'll see what that sounds like!

Metal petals are actually really awesome! And the smiley face sticker is a MUST.

The petals have an unexpected low frequency pitch, and they echo like crazy. Smaller petals have higher pitch. Theoretically this could be tuned in a controlled fashion. Perhaps for the next iteration~

Week 4-5: Egg reverberation, Mini-Squids.

After I shorted my $17 Radio Shack amplifier, Travis mentioned that one could buy cheap headphone amplifiers online. Ordered a Fiio headphone amp for $4, and it is proving exceedingly useful for testing.

Sasha mentioned Helmholtz resonators in class. See previous doodle... I wanted to fan eggshells and make music come from holes in a wall. Still a possibility. Just need some amplification:

That's a condenser microphone inside a hollow eggshell (yes I washed it out first). It sounds really nice, actually. Something like a seashell. That's what it sounds like to be within an egg.  :) I'll have to make a recording.

This week I switched from carrying around a slinky to carrying around a slinky, a piezo disk, audio amplifier, and headphones.

Week 3: Slinky Pianos, Giant Squids

This is the week when I carried a small slinky around with me 24/7, to show anyone who would listen. :) And blew out a RadioShack amplifier.

Video: Going off the "slinky piano" idea, here was iteration 1

slinky piano attempt #1 video

Then, I think it was Eoin who mentioned the words "steel drum" and there happened to be one upstairs, so here we have the lovely

Video: Steel Drum - Steel Slinkies 1

metal slinkies + steel drum = awesome underwater kind of sound video

Both Eoin and my roommate Tamara says it looks like a giant squid. Tamara likes squids. :)

Still have plans to pop a balloon in Packard stairwell one of these days. Stomped down the metal stairs in tap-dancing boots the other day, that was LOUD.

more ideas doodles - John had an idea to pop balloons - well that is difficult - but bubbles pop! And they are easy to regenerate. so:

but first, I went somewhat slinky crazy. Starting collection of slinkies.. now.

Week 2: Brainstorming

today Sasha let me borrow the small Radio Shack amplifier+speaker and i tried to get my roommates to listen to my heartbeat through a piezoelectric disk. not as good as a stethoscope, but fun. :)

ideas doodles:

Going off the "rain chime", perhaps it could also be possible to have a "slinky piano"? :)

And if you have never been in the stairwell of Packard, I think the stairwell between floors 1 & 2, and 2 & 3, have great potential. Lots of echoes there, and the stairs are made of metal!