[sdiy] slightly OT : DIY robotics

[John L Marshall]

A fellow instructor is an officer of the Seattle Robotics Society. I will
see if he has any pointers.

There is a great book "Bio-Music" by Manford L Eaton.

Back in the 60-70's multimedia environments were created by artists; Tudor,
Cage, Saltsman, Leedy, and so on.

I designed a multimedia environment that was based upon several mobiles. The
mobiles were wireless microphones each with a resonating pipe. The pipes
were suspended from the ceiling by wire and were allowed to freely rotate by
the air currents in the large room. Scattered throughout the sides of the
room were speakers that completed the loop. Between the microphones and
speakers was an assortment of electronics; filters, ring modulators,
limiters, switches. Fun.

I like the idea of "stations" that visitors can interact with. The stations
can have drums, toys, etc. but each has a transducer that actuates the
"hidden electronics" with surprise results.

Check out http://www.omega.com/ for all types of transducers.

John


----- Original Message -----
From: jbv <jbv.silences at wanadoo.fr>
To: SynthDIY <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2002 2:57 PM
Subject: [sdiy] slightly OT : DIY robotics


> Hi all,
>
> As I recently found myself a passion for robotics,
> I spent the week end scouring the web for companies
> selling cheap robotics kits.
> Among others, I found this one :
> http://www.hvwtech.com/catalog.htm#robotics
>
> Ans as I was browsing sites & catalogs & datasheets,
> I was wondering :
>
> - does anybody have any experience with such kits ?
>
> - why not use such small robots interactions (in group
> behaviors for instance) to trigger / process musical
> patterns / sequences in realtime ?
>
> - these catalogs feature several parts such as motors &
> sensors, and I was wondering if anyone has ever thought
> of getting inspiration from these robotics design for designing
> new interfaces for electronic instruments...
> I mean : we all know the (rather cliched) concept of robots
> playing instruments like humans, or electronic instruments
> using biological parameters (EEG, muscles activity...) to
> trigger / generate MIDI...
> But is there a more sophisticated approach, like using various
> sensors to build a sort of feedback loop between sound / music
> generation and environmental parameters perception...
>
> Well, this is very rough brainstorming so far, and I've no idea
> where this is going (or if it's going anywhere)...
> Any idea, suggestion, experience, pointers to some litterature ?
>
> Thanks.
> JB
>
>