Mechatronic Art and Music

These are the four final projects from the 2020 "Mechatronic Art & Music" course. Each student was tasked with opened ended assignment of designing and creating their own electro-mechanical device related to their personal creative practice. Carl Burgin, Trevor Bock, Charles Danner, Cy Krafft & Kai-Luen Liang

Kai-Luen Liang

Tomorrow There Will Be Wind ( Automatic Windchimes )
A performance of playing an Arduino controlled set of wind chimes.
Vibration motors are activated through a motor driver creating divisions and
polyrhythms based on various “states.” First iteration prototype with beer
bottle activation.


 

Trevor Bock

4-Note Bottle Blowing Instrument

I have always loved the angelic sound that is produced by blowing into an empty glass
bottle. The combination of wind noise and the ringing sine wave tone that resonates out of the
bottle creates a fascinating timbre that is impossible to perfectly replicate digitally. What if you
could mechanically create this sound and produce beautiful melodies to perform with it? This is
what inspired me to create the 4-Note Bottle Blowing Instrument. This device contains four
small fans attached to DC motors mounted in a specific way to effectively blow air into each of
the bottles. This causes them to resonate and create a fairly loud sine tone. Each bottle is
individually tuned by raising and lowering the amount of water inside them. Using an Arduino,
the instrument will then perform a sequence of notes by fading the fans in and out from left to
right. This allows musicians to tune each bottle accordingly and create any four part melody
they desire.


 

Cy Krafft

This work in progress was inspired by a love of old school liquid light shows and a fascination
with the precise engineering of the inside of a moving head. The goal is to repurpose the
internal mechanisms from used Clay Paky Alpha Spot and Alpha Wash fixtures to create an
animating liquid light show in the beam of the fixtures.
I began with the Alpha Wash fixtures due to the less complex internal layout. However, due to
the limited range of beam effects in the fixture, the color wheels were my first choice for
modification. The challenge with the color wheels was adapting the rotational movement of the
color wheels into the vertical movement of a plate.
The first iteration of this design is made of two clear discs connected by a silicone tube to create
a sealed container that is then filled with the dyed oil and water. The two discs can then be
oscillated against each other through the use of a ridged gear on the inside of the metal plates
holding the discs. This creates the fluid movement associated with traditional liquid light shows.
In addition, the entire mechanism can be moved in and out of the beam to add or remove the
effect. The prototype of this iteration is still in development


 

Charles Danner


 

Flenoit Webster

calvery xp faith in the 21st century and a look at the possible events- there is a chamber of people found in a basement of a prison who have been there since the late 1900’s suddenly an execution order has been created for all 144’000 souls and NOW an agent from the feds is investigating […]

Max Jaffe

The SOFT Glass “The S.O.F.T. (Sonification Of Flowing Temporality) Glass is an hourglass that makes and manipulates sound. In its final form, it will be a sculptural object that can double as a musical instrument, based on the simple and enduring timekeeping device dating back at least to the 16th century BC. Utilizing a variety […]

Katherine Shea

Georgie Romero Is Done For A horror comedy audio drama podcast. Georgie Romero, a zombie, has risen from the grave, driven to solve the mystery of her former human life with the help of an inept witch and a cynical ghost. Rachel Greenberg, producer/co-writer/co-producer Socks Whitmore, producer/lead actor Evan Johnson, composer/sound engineer Elliot Yokum, sound […]

Mia Yao Meng

Hyperreal Gesstures This project is a reflection of the gestures we perform on a routine basis in order to interact (as the trigger and the data input) with networked devices such as smartphones and laptops. These gestures are abstracted/flattened in the design process and transformed into online behaviors. This habit-formation process only takes us a […]

Estela Anakaren Silva Botello

México Mágico Machista Part of documentation of a feminist protest in Monterrey, Mexico (nationwide initiative) on March 8th 2020— which sought to gain visibility to the alarming rates of femicides in Mexico due to gender violence rooted in machismo, an almost intrinsic, evil element of our culture. *screen printed sign on cardboard *scan of 35mm […]

MAHEDI ANJUMAN

Suffocation My artworks respond to the psychological impact of action and reaction (Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion). I like to think of this law in metaphorical terms beyond the literal mathematical implications. We exist in a constant state of action and reaction – every being is psychologically reacting to every action around that. […]