Learning from each other…
I fell in love with Origami last week, I decided to use Origami Magic Ball shape to make a lamp. The idea is to make the lamp adjustable in order to create different shapes. Here is a little piece of video process…
After several weeks work, finally I made a workable demo for my guitar robot. However, the sound is not as good as I thought. I will refine my design a lot.
things needs to be done in the future:
1. replace solenoid to servo motor
2. rebuild wood box with more curve
3. redesign the movement of the pick
4. redesign the motor mount
5. stable the supporting bar
here is some pictures and video’s of it.
Do not prejudge this, it’s harder than you think to make it fast.
I’m glad to be a team with Steven Litt, we experimented more than 10 different ways to make our mouse trap car faster and straighter. And we learned a lot from building it. Again, LEGO is so great to make fast production. Here is some photo of our little racer.
After reading the book, I realized how smart LEGO is designed! After a short while playing with it, I find it’s the BEST tool for rapid prototyping. It can simulate lots of machines we are using everyday. David and I built some machines following the instruction book. We feel not enough. We tried to built several machines, including Theo Jansen’s walking machine(someone built in LEGO, Amazing). However, we think we might used all the box to built it, after finished the first leg, we give it up. Then I realized the chain machine from Arthur Ganson will be easy to build, so David and I start to build it before Class, after 2 hours building(however, we found it harder to make the motor at the bottom, so we made it upside down), here comes it:
VIDEO:
PHOTO:
Music Machine
ABSTRACT
Music Machine is a microchip controlled mechanical musical instrument. The interaction between user and this machine is the color information on a piece of paper. By analyzing colors, the machine will map this information and send signals to related motors, which will strike musical strings in order to generate sounds. User will get fully entertainments from both string-produced sound and motor-triggered mechanical movement.
RELATED BACKGROUND
I’m very interested into the relationship between color and music. As a software engineering background student in ITP, I used to use 3D technology to visualize this relationship. ‘Colorful Melody’ is one installation I made to generate digital sound by mapping live image from web camera on a screen. Also in nature, color as one waveform, shares a lot of comment attributes as sound. By mathematically mapping this information, it became an interesting process to generate certain patterns to manipulate those data. From certain point of view, Music Machine is a modern version of player piano. Instead of reading holes on a paper, musical machine will read color information as analog input. Also, drawing on a paper has more arbitrary possibilities than punching hole by following some patterns. With the help of magnet pickup and signal amplification circuit, it’s also possible to control volume change on the output.
‘Absolut Quartet’ is another inspiration for me to choose to use mechanical sound instead of computer-synthesized sound. ‘Absolut Quartet’ is music making machine, which is played by three instruments. The main instrument is a ballistic marimba, which launches rubber balls roughly 2m into the air, precisely aimed to bounce off of 42 chromatic wooden keys. Besides the acoustic sounds, the movement of balls in the air is visually enjoyable. The machine perfectly mixed the analog and digital realms in its own way.
In 2001, a company called ‘Animusic’ published their first computer-animated music album ‘Animusic 1′. They used computer 3D technology to generate the animation of graphical instrument elements and synthesize sound effects for the animation. Through a lot of design elements in the animation is surrealistic, however, I got tremendous inspiration from them, and I believe, with modern technology, some of the instruments in the animation could be made in a quite large possibility. Actually, ‘Absolut Quartet’ is very similar with one of the instruments in it.
In this project, I tried to experiment the relationship between color information and sound. I mapped the color into the sound, and visualized the color also. In computer, this mapping is easy to do, because both music and color have lots of attributes. If I want to make mechanical music, the sound will be largely limited. Also, if I use solenoid motor, it will change the analog sound into digital. Despite all this limitations, mechanical music have its special character: unique sound, real time movements, etc. I also want to experimental the light/shadow to visualize this instrument.
2. Ferrofluid Clock
It is the first ‘big’ project I built by using mechanical movements. With little background and material references, I spent most of the time by looking for the right materials. Most the machine was built in wood. The gears are coming with the motor, I made other gears by cutting plastic or hacking from broken printers. Also used a lot of glue to mount a small magnet on to the rubber chain. Anyway, I’m surprised to see the machine move at the first beginning.
I think I’m really like building stuff, and enjoy the mechanical movements. To build a music robot is one way to realize both mechanics and music. To interactive with color is one direction I should follow in ITP.
(picture from bea.st.com)
I like this machine not only because of the music it generated, but also the enjoyable of visual movements. My brain got fully entertainment from my eyes following the pingpong ball falling down along with the pure melody. And all of this did by a machine. If there is no music, all the balls movement can be called ‘visual sculpture’. So many thoughts filling in my head after the first time I saw this machine. I think I truly attracted by the mechanical movements of the instruments.
2. Animusic
Recently, I found a piece of video from youtube, really amazing 3D music animations. I think it full filled people’s dream of future music. When I reading about this video history, I realized that it was made 8 years before. And there is a similar piece of video as ‘Absolut Quartet’. I’m kind of shocked by the way they visualize music instruments. After deep thinking of it, I think they are trying to simplize instruments, explosure the instruments. like people made a piano explosing all the levers strings, no frames/covers outsides. Also they simplified the concept of robert. People do not see much detail of how robot connected to the instrument, people can just imagine they are there, they move and make sounds. It’s like scientific fiction, so much possibilities can be done in the future. Again, I’m totally into the beauty of mechnical movements, even it is fictional, conceptional dream.
Group Member: Mike Rosenthal, Ithai, Cynthia, and me
Assignment Goal: Crash an egg with less than 50% shell
Energy Transition: crack an egg by hand, pour into a glass cup which sits on one side of a level, the other side lift up and trigger a big screw fall on to a mouse trap, a mouse trap tied with a thread, when it compress, it will pull a stick out of a pipe. Then several small heavy parts falls down in the tube, and trigger a power switch on. Power switch turn on the lights, 4 solar panels get light and turn on a motor, a motor spins and go down to a ramp, a soldering machine on the car burned a strong threads, which hold an egg in a small installation. When the thread broke, the egg lifted up by rubber band, then a big injector suck the egg out of the shell. ~~~~~(so complicated, lots of energy waste, hard to describe).
Here is a piece of Video:
Project: LOTO, GO! Description: Online Lottery/Vote Platform based on Textmarks. User can set up an online lottery/vote activity on this platform, participators for those activity can send short message to join in, and also can go online to check the status. It makes easier for anyone who do not have a technology background to use textmarks in order to set up a vote/lottery. Main Features:1. Easy to setup up, change and broadcast information to all users.2. Based on algorithmics, fair to everyone to join.3. No fees to use, all free.4. Location Based setup, easy for user to locate it.5. Multi-activities support, no limit for users. Screen Shots: 
