Festival2012/Submit/Soft Circuit Sounds
Session Proposal: Soft Circuit Sounds
- Soft Circuit Sounds: Design a tablet app for the news.
- Affiliation: Codasign
- Session format: Learning Lab
What will your session or activity allow people to make, learn or do?
This session will let people make music with non-traditional physical interfaces. We won't have pianos or drumsets, but will have instead balloons and play dough and felt. We will introduce using conductive materials that aren't traditional circuit components like conductive thread.
We will have a collection of Arduinos hooked up to speakers. Each Arduino will be running a music synthesiser on it that can be controlled via its digital and analogue pins. Participants will get try out different sensors to design their own interactive controller for the synth, and if they would like, they can design and make their own sensor.
Participants will learn:
- Basics of audio synthesis, principally the difference in the sounds generated and how those sounds can be controlled
- Basics of electrical circuits and conductivity
- Designing and then implementing a design
Participants will make:
- A musical instrument
- A soft sensor (from textiles or play-dough)
How do you see that working?
- We will introduce the general concepts with a demo of a synth controlled by some of the sensors we brought.
- We will bring 10 Arduinos with programmed synthesisers on them. Groups will be formed around each Arduino.
- A variety of sensors will be brought. Limited materials will be available for creating new sensors.
- After the groups have had time to plan and then implement their design, each group will get to perform on their new instrument.
All instructional material will be available (under CC) on our [[ http://learning.codasign.com | website]] where we host all of our workshop materials.
How will you deal with 5, 15, 50 participants?
- With 5 - 10 participants: Each participant will get their own synthesiser to play with, but collaboration with others will be encouraged.
- With 11 - 30 participants: Groups of up to 3 will be formed around each synth.
How long within your session before someone else can teach this?
About 10 min for being able to interact on a basic level to generate sounds, another 20-30min to understand some of the fundamentals of the different sensors.
What do you see as outcomes after the festival?
Participants will leave with a better understanding of generating music and be introduced to alternative ways of interacting with electronics.
We will provide these follow-up opportunities:
- All Arduino source code will be open source and available online, so if participants have Arduinos, they can repeat the workshop at home
- All workshop materials and instructions for making sensors will be available online
- Participate in future Codasign workshops
- Join our mailing list to stay in touch and share progress