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 […]

Madison Hicks

Still Growing “Still Growing” is a short solo created in the restrictions of my home surrounded around a stool. It is a study on time and growth, striving to show that we are “still growing” in this time of quarantine.

Sven Golden

Blake The Sorcerer Blake The Sorcerer is a recently released album of original piano solo pieces with different moods and subjects Fortune Freeway –

Kai Luen Liang

Flag ASMR “On Sept 11th, 2001 I watched the twin towers falling with my father. Glued to the TV. A silent demolition. An American reality TV show. In the weeks that followed, I started to see American flags everywhere. Especially from immigrants of all colors, flying the flag out of a sense of fear of […]

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 […]

Minline Lee

Silver & Matte grey series The avatars of digital era

Daniel Rappaport

Live Your Fantasy! Daniel L Rappaport is a CalArts alum (graphic design ’01) and is a graduate of the FIDM/Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (digital media ’08). His ascendants are Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, and others, and he hails from the disgustingly famous Beverly Hills, CA. He has over 25 years of digital media […]