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
Liquid Light Movers
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
TOY P1ANO
The TOY P1ANO is a self-playing hyper
instrument 30 Key Schoenhut Piano modified with
solenoids, copper contacts + contact mics
Mux chips + Teensy Audio shield + teensy3.6
to read keys + output Midi
Excitation from contact mics synthesizes a
tuned modeled string based on the
Karplus-Strong synthesis model
Danny Hynds
David Lynchenborough –
Aashray Harishankar
Flight “Flight” is a 2019 concept album mirroring the timeline of human life, from birth until death and beyond. Each song, lyrically and sonically, represents a different time period, but all are reflections of life as a whole. Beginning with “Liftoff/Zephyr”, we rise into a period of birth and infancy, of wonder and innocence, carrying […]
Kenneth Chan
A music collage I made with reversed samples of my previously recorded music.
Shaharoh Chism
Crazy For You Crazy For You performed by Shaharoh and her band In Lieu Of. www.shaharoh.com Band: Brian Farst, David Howard and Ben Ochieng
Adam Zuckerman
A collection of melodies. Embedded like a small light in the corner. This piece engages themes and processes of transparency/translucence, copying/covering, and distance/absence: the traces of a thing not there. Melody fragments expand and contract. Here, melody crystallizes into harmony and harmony unfolds as melody. Like a constellation of stars; or in the direction of […]
Sam Jones
Noticing Nature Noticing Nature looks at how a new story is needed that is more centered around nature. It explores how everything, including ourselves, is connected, and how important it is that we take the time to slow down and notice the nature that surrounds us every day. http://www.noticingnature.com/
Joana P. Cardozo
The Naked Hours For 100 hours, I cut 2 x 2 inches black paper with scissors and covered the L-Shape Gallery walls at the California Institute of the Arts. I did not speak. I did not use a cell phone or other electronics. I ate, rested, wrote, and meditated as necessary. I left the gallery […]
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 […]