[sdiy] Chaotic/lo-fi patching techniques

[Peter Keller]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 01:00:04PM -0700, Ben Lincoln wrote:
> That's a pretty cool idea. Could you do something similar using ferrofluid
> (so that the shape of the fluid could be magnetically controlled as well
> as vibrationally), or would the electromagnets and whatnot cause too much
> interference?

I see... You'd place magnets on the surface of the board, which would pull
the ferrofluid up to the nails for contact. This method would produce
probably very stable "patches", meaning you place the various magnets
around the 2D board and each would pull up the fluid to it (and have some
sticky-ball like behaviour when the magnets are close to each other).

I think your magnetic control method would produce localized connections
easily and since there really isn't enough of a changing magnetic field
interacting with the nails (only when you move the magnets), I think it
would be electrically stable.

One problem would be the nails themselves would act as flux intensifiers,
so you'd either get a complicated field (read, a large patch of connected
nails), or would have to use plastic nails with a conductive tip to
minimize the effect.

Vibrational control means putting some servos around the water box
(sides and bottom), and then controlling the vibration of the water
(or more viscous substance). Here's a video of such a thing:

http://www.c00lstuff.com/178/Non_Newtonian_fluid_under_vibration/

I'm sure there are better videos, but I'm in a hurry.

But, if you want to keep the human aspect of patch/music generation with
this system we've informally described, then either the mallets on the nails
for music generation, or ferromagetic fluid and magnets for patch generation
seem to be a good idea. Just my 2 cents though...

Later,
-pete