Yoo Yeh 250B
Contents
PiezoFlower Garden
by Yoo Hsiu (Yoo-Yoo) Yeh
for Music 250b: Interactive Sound Art
Winter 2013
Week 8: PiezoFlower Garden, v.1
(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: 300px
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.
Here is a video of the "garden" so far, before placement in the terrarium: PiezoFlower Garden Boom
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:
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.
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.
Going off the "slinky piano" idea, here was iteration 1: slinky piano attempt #1
Then, I think it was Eoin who mentioned the words "steel drum" and there happened to be one upstairs, so here we have a lovely video:
metal slinkies + steel drum = awesome underwater kind of sound
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:
(doodle here)
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!
