David Wicks :: Works » arduino

Trace: Resonance Field

Wicks — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 01:31:31 +0000

Created in collaboration with Pete Hawkes, Trace is a series of ceramic plates installed in the desert that are struck according to past local seismic activity. Each plate repeats the recent history of movement at a site in the surrounding mountain ranges, transforming it into rhythmic percussion. The overall effect is something like a seismic gamelan, a subtle audible and visible trace of the activity that came before it.

Audio excerpt from Trace (wear headphones)

Trace work was installed in 29 Palms—just North of Joshua Tree—as part of the Dry Immersion III: Desert Projects exhibition. Process photos and video are available on flickr.

We used python to turn the seismic waveforms into data usable by an arduino microcontroller that drove the motors. Elaine Hu fabricated the ceramics.

The making and exhibition of Trace was supported by a grant from UCIRA.

Portable Forest

Wicks — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:47:40 +0000

Portable Forest is a jacket that plays bird songs and the sound of water. As you zip up the jacket, bird calls begin to echo around you. You start at a trailhead, a few birds nearby—just able to make out the sound of a nearby brook—and progress down a riverine path until reaching a waterfall when the jacket is fully zipped up.

Portable Forest is an attempt to create a portable natural space; one the wearer can raise around themselves wherever they are.

I gathered audio on a series of hikes in Southern California to set the tone for the walk. For the final tracks, I used bird sounds from ASU and a water sound from freesound.org.

Rebecca Fenton helped with photography and gave sewing advice. ITP provided information on making potentiometers using conductive thread.

This prototype jacket was made with Arduino. Small pockets of green fabric were sewn in to an existing jacket—one which I’ve taken many hikes through the woods in—to hold speakers that responded to the zipping and unzipping of the jacket.

Source code for controlling the embedded MP3 players from Arduino is available on github. Process photos can be seen in the flickr set.

Drawing Machine

Wicks — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 08:30:26 +0000

The drawing machine was created for the end-of-semester architecture open house. A physical pen is controlled by a video signal. When objects move near the pen’s virtual location, both the virtual and the real pen move to follow those objects. The result is a sympathetic flying pen that jitters and arcs across the canvas as it chases after everything it sees. The marks on the page are chaotic, but have an order imposed on them by the mechanical limitations of the machine.

Adam Michalak and Tom Heltzel collaborated in the conception and physical construction of the drawing machine.