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
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 […]
Tim Feeney
Multimeda recordings of spontaneous music: prompts for assembling sound and image, running remote-distanced seances, and/or time-based annoyance. CalArts Percussion Ensemble: Morgan Alford, Kristyna Svihalkova, Henry Delargy, and Eric Lennartson Free Improvisation Ensemble: Camille Kiku Belair, Maria Alejandra Bulla, Rebecca Drapkin, Hazel Feiner, Brian Griffith, Jeremy Rosenstock, Adam Zuckerman, Kai Cleaveland, Stefany Glik, Bjorn Gustafsson, Terry […]
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 […]
Kathleen Fox
Don't Let Me Be Lonely Don’t Let Me Be Lonely is an architectural projection performance inspired by Claudia Rankine’s book of poems of the same name. The projection mapping explores loneliness as it exists at CalArts both before and during the COVID19 Crisis. Rankine defines loneliness as “What we cannot do for each other.” This […]
Jessie Hodges
Save Yourself; VIDEO COMPILATION Submitting one installation work “Save Yourself” along with a compilation of videos that I would loop together. “No One Has Met Me, “Keep on Keepin’ On”,”Lick Piece”, “The Artist is Roasted” “What I Found Under the Rug: A Statement about Stress”
Lorelei Acuna
Indigarb Fast fashion is the world’s second largest polluter, emitting 10% of all carbon emissions and is dumped into lands and oceans all over the world. In Our compilation of video and photography come together to evoke empathetic response in our viewers. By seeing humans absorbed in plastic, we mirror the way our Earth and […]
Yiran Wang
Travel.Connect Finding connections in this world…
Roger Holzberg
LIFE QUILT “Created by the Healthcare by Design class of 2020 (CalArts Theater School), in partnership with Henry Mayo hospital. LIFE QUILT is a part of a larger pilot program developed for patients & families approaching end of life. Each panel is an active, creative experience, designed to reduce anxiety, connect family members in support, […]