[ITP: New Portraits] Final Project Update

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Group members: Kay Wasil, Elif Ergin, and Cindy Hu

Idea

For our final project in Alan’s New Portraits class we need to make some volumetric captures using the Depthkit system, post-process, and make either a Unity project or some WEBGL assets for a live stream. This includes getting a subject, calibrating the systems, conducting interviews, lighting, and recording sound. Kay was super generous in opening up their community to us and they did a lot of hard work putting out an open call for drag performers to come into 370 and be our beautiful subjects!

Process

We booked out the Media Commons last Friday night to capture two performances. NYC-based performers Charlotte Harlotte and Sweaty Eddie generously shared their time and talents with us. We only had a 3 hour block of time so we had to move kind of quickly to make sure we could film everything we needed.

Calibration

First step is always calibrating the Depthkit system. We made super quick work of this the first time… but then we realized that the angles of the cameras were off because we couldn’t see feet through some of the camera views. Do the heavy cables pull the cameras down?

One question I do have is that after fixing the camera+sensor angles and then redoing the calibration in the original project, it seemed like the accuracy/precision went down. Does it break a project when adding new calibration points to an existing project? We decided to make a new project and start calibration over again, which seemed to work! Not sure if anyone recorded the final stats of our calibration but we got there eventually.

Lighting

After getting calibrated and checking all the camera views we moved onto lighting. There were still quite a few blue light flares which we worked on removing. This is also super weird because we fixed all the lighting in last class, right? Maybe the lights weren’t locked in place and gravity pulled them down too?

We set up a pink and orange light for Charlotte which looked SO good!

Our gorgeous performer Charlotte!

Sound

We wanted to record some interview questions so we set up a Zoom recorder. Here’s Elif while she’s really serious about the boom.

Filming

❤️❤️❤️

This experience was honestly so fun and super special! We were able to back up our files onto a hard drive and now I need to start reading up on the Unity setup.

[ITP: Thesis II] Ctrl + Art + Delight

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Ok, these are the vibessss

I always wanted a cartoon sidekick like Lizzie McGuire

Also, my dear friend Lita shared another artistic reference that I think is super relevant to this project: Milford Graves, A Mind-Body Deal… will look into this in more depth in the future. When there’s more time…

Finishing up Womb

No words, just pictures.

Big mess!

Arduino Nano 33 IoT documentation

Oh okay, here are some words! One of the things I was desperately trying to accomplish with my washing machine was to use only one power supply. The motor runs on 24V and the LEDs need 5V and the max input voltage to the Arduino VIN pin is 21V. I monkeyed with the LM317 voltage regulator to step down the 24V to something the Arduino could handle. Bianca shared this super handy website to calculate the resistors needed to step down using the LM317. The voltage regulator got hot, but I was getting the expected voltage out and was able to power my Arduino Nano 33 IoT. However, the LEDs were not lighting up and I only measured ~2.5V out of the 5V pin. Turns out the Arduino can’t generate 5V if it is being powered externally.🤦🏽‍♀️

So, the current setup has two power supplies coming out of the washing machine but a future project would be to use another voltage regulator to create a 5V rail and only use the 24V power supply to run the whole system.

Installation Design

Something I was really unsure about was how all the artifacts would come together into one art piece or installation. I really didn’t want to just put all my stuff on a table for people to look at… it is supposed to resemble a body afterall. With my time and budget being what it was, I decided to go with something that was suggested to me in the alumni feedback sessions: put all the sculptures on uniform pedestals or columns.

Originally I had hoped I would be able to create cardboard stands for all my sculptures that would be in the shape of legs. However, based on some office hours I had with Ian in the shop it became apparent that the cardboard might not be able to hold up the heavier sculptures. I opted to use our department’s speed rail and I sifted through the random length pipes to make three pedestals that were at Priyanka brain, stomach, and womb height.

Handout

Because there are multiple parts to my thesis and the work I’m presenting is really personal to me, I decided to create a little handout to give viewers some context for my work. I wanted to invite the viewer to check in with themselves and I offered them a guided body-scan meditation based on what I learned in making my “embodiments”.

I placed these handouts with a box of crayons on a table next to my sculptures and I got surprisingly many responses! I collected all the responses in this google spread sheet and I’ve scanned some special ones. Not sure what this data means or adds to my project yet…

3D scan and print head

My buddy Kay told me that they just got their face scanned at NYU’s LaGuardia Studio and got the majority of the cost covered by grant money we have at ITP, and that it might be something relevant to my project as well. So I took their idea and ran with it. Laguardia is such a great resource to ITP students and they were really quick with post-processing and sending the files.

I was able to bribe my buddy Mat with a milkshake to help me get the scan ready to 3D print. He helped me get the super large file into Blender and simplify the mesh. To get a good scan, I had to remove my glasses and some of my jewelry but those are really important to the Priyanka-aesthetic. Mat modeled my glasses for me and helped me add the finishing touches of a septum ring and base.

Before printing, we dialed in some settings in Cura, specifically the nozzle speed and layer height which both affect the quality (and time) of the final print. My 5 inch head took 1 day and 5 hours to print … on the big special printer! <3

modelling glasses in Fusion

close up

support material in Cura

Ok, those 3D printer lovers never tell you how much work it can be to remove the print supports! I thought they would just fall away easily. Nope! It took a lot of force, care, time, and cutters+pliers to remove them. The only issue I really ran into is that the glasses ended up being really thin and they were super delicate. I broke them a few times, but it was nothing that some super glue couldn’t fix.

Projected head

So my last little gimmick I wanted to make was my projected head, bopping around on the floor. You know, like how logos are sometimes illuminated on the floor when you open the door of a luxury car? I also wanted to join all the projection cool kids. But you know what this means, right? I needed to revisit the infamous Hypercinema Cornell Box…

I made a new Unity project and plopped my head scan (.obj) in there. I also found the old assets from Gabe’s class to get a box. I mostly followed this tutorial to write the script to get my head bouncing around. To get this animation made, it honestly was a bunch of googling and youtube tutorials, the helpful ones I’ve linked below. To get the head to look like it was bouncing around in emptiness, I turned off the skybox under the camera settings and changed the background color to black. Once the physics of the “game” was all sorted out and the scene looked right, I just built the Unity project which makes it really easy to run.

C + A + D show

I am feeling so lucky, and admittedly SO burnt out, but our group thesis art show @ NYC Resistor was A HUGE SUCCESS! I got my project all done, install and show time went without a hitch, and I got really great feedback and participation with my thesis! I plan on writing a more comprehensive blog post about how we organized this art show and how it went for our group in the future, but in the mean time here are some of my favorite photos taken by Hank during the show.

[ITP: New Portraits] In Defense of the Poor Image

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[Reading] In Defense of the Poor Image

Lol, what’s ironic is I had trouble downloading this image from the article…

A poor image is a preview, thumbnail, distributed for free, squeezed, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, copied and pasted. As culture became a commodity and cinema was commercialized poor images actually made images/video/cinema/art accessible to the masses. Non-conformist and experimental visual matter disappeared from the surface into an underground of alternative archives and collections kept safe by humans. People who care enough to download and re-distribute images became co-authors. The medium of poor images is a co-created global network, a human network, distributed by word of mouth.

Here are some of my other notes:

  • “It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction.”

  • High-end/”rich” economies of film are rooted in national culture, capitalist studio production, male genius, conservative in their structure

  • lack of resolution = appropriation and displacement

  • poor image reveals the decline of experimental and non-commercial cinema

  • imperfect cinema = blurring the line between consumer and producer, audience and author

  • Users become editors, critics, translators, and (co-) authors of poor images —> popular images! For the people, people LOVE these images

Depthkit

We have our own Depthkit rig downstairs in the Media Commons. Depthkit it a software solution that captures volumetric video with a PC and depth sensors. The exported media is combined-per-pixel video files and are 3D objects at runtime in Unity.

Calibration

We have an appointment for the media commons 04/02 @ 4pm… 😈

[ITP: Designing Your Voice] Final Project Planning

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Gather samples of body

Make knobs

Gate sequencer vs. pitch sequencers

Plug into brain?!!?!

you can never have too many vca’s

  • VCAs allow us to inject animation into our patches

    • Let us change the volume of signals over time

    • Change the “volume” of control voltages (CVs)

  • Use a VCA to build things:

    • Compressor, side-chain a kick (?), AM synthesis

    • Intermediary to modulate modulators

  • Moog DFAM

  • VCA’s can have character, not always clean

  • Input, output, control voltage (controls how loud)

  • VCAs to create voices, filters out sub-base mud, closes voice down

  • AM synthesis - plug another oscillator into CV control, oscillators kind of combine

  • Using a sequencer to change the volume of another pitch sequencer output

  • Static vs. animated

arpeggiator code

https://brendanbyrne.info/Theseus-1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i_DgFkcAxk&list=PLBvnHGvQhLl0YpfJwEvFw_nmJGDnw_A-t&index=1

https://doudoroff.com/sequencers/

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=step+sequencer

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=teensy+sequencer

Resources

Why you can never have too many VCAs

Expert in modular synths

Contact mic tutorial

Contact mic club

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiatLBJoWIc

[ITP: Thesis II] Alumni Feedback

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Alumni Feedback

Here are the scribbly notes I took during my crazy alumni feedback sessions. I met with some really talented artists and got some great pointers. Specifically, Darcy Neal, Ari Melenciano, ❤️ Khushbu Kshirsagar ❤️, and Hayeon Hwang… and I roped in my new teacher Alan Winslow to give me some feedback as well!

Here is the relevant feedback:

  • Create a “take-away” paper —> maybe a body passport, checkin? ask questions

    • Could ask the viewer to describe me or what they learned about me, what they learned about themselves?

  • Installation is touching in with the senses

    • Grounding, polyvagal theory, fight/flight/freeze

  • Potentially add soft material?

  • You don’t need to make your art make sense to other people

  • What are you looking for by getting more connected with body?

  • Project is relatable, vulnerable

    • Reflect yourself and the viewer to themselves

  • Create thoughtful/intentional exhibition

  • Alumni like the sketches and illustrations…

  • Make the viewer go deeper

  • Thesis is not the end, it can be the middle

    • It is okay to compromise on the scale

  • Since pieces are so different, uniformity in showing the pieces could be good —> pedestals, table, whatever

  • Could collect body samples using a contact mic

TMC2209 stepper motor driver

Womb

So, I’m bringing back the washing machine!! I originally made this curiosity portal for Sharon’s STEM Accessibility class. I was able to get it like 90% done last year but the motor couldn’t reliably turn the drum and I feel like I got too edgy with the concept and I abandoned it totally.

To get it up and running, the first step was getting the motor system going. Based on some advice from Phil, I got a new big, bad motor and his favorite driver, the TMC2209. I got some help from other stepper experts Jeff Feddersen and resident Gracy to get the motor and driver up and running! Here are some updates I needed to make to my circuit:

  • I needed to chop off the two pins that were in-line with the ENABLE pin —> out-of-the-box configuration is not meant for bread board

  • GND the ENABLE pin

  • Through some testing, I decided to implement microstepping of 8 microsteps to get the speed that felt right

From stepper driver documentation

It is really amazing that you can move a stepper motor just by blinking a pin! So I didn’t use any motor libraries in my final code. I also whipped up a lil sequence for the washing machine to follow, with some typical washing machine randomness. I also put in some neopixel action to get some portal lighting. As always, you can find my code and other files at my Github repo.

Motor wiring

Stomach

I also worked really really hard on finishing up my journey-to-my-stomach pop up book. Another body part down: stomach✅. You can find all my documentation on the paper process at this blog post.

Face

The last body part I’m working on is the inter-FACE. This is the least baked body part. Inter-FACE will be the interface to this synth on the left. I’ve got quite a bit of work still to do. You can find some of my progress at these blog posts.

Thesis Show @ NYC Resistor

On top of developing my thesis itself, I’m curating and producing a group thesis show at one of my favorite NY spaces, NYC Resistor. With the help of my buddy César, we put out an open call to be a part of the show, went through submissions, organized the artists into production teams, and did all the coordinating with the venue to make the show a reality. Below is the beautiful show poster designed by Angie Kim and some stickers I made to give away!

Stickers for the show!

[ITP: New Portraits] First Week Portraits!

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3D scan portraits

For our first assignment, we had to make two 3D portraits, one of a person and one of an object, using the Polycam app. I don’t remember why that app didn’t work for me before, but now I use Scaniverse. Below are some screen shots of my portraits.

Kay

Okayyyy. So this portrait was kind of done in the spur of the moment. A “volumetric candid” if you will. But if I am being really honest, not much preparation of thought went into composing and posing this portrait. Kay and I sat next to each other on the ITP floor all Spring Break working through our stuff … and unfortunately this was kind of our vibe. Tired, burnt out, task-list oriented. Technically, tho, I think this turned out to be a pretty good scan!

Josh

Fail? Or portrait

Thinking of an object that might serve as a portrait, I was hoping to scan Josh’s phone and airpods. They are both “Josh yellow” and really personal items that allude to identity, personality, taste, etc.

When I tried scanning Josh’s phone and airpod case. My app refused to process the point cloud altogether, which has never happened to me before. My only guess is that it didn’t like the reflectivity of the phone screen? But that’s pretty weird because I’ve definitely scanned objects/spaces with mirrors before!

I tried again by scanning Josh’s water bottle this time. The scan came out way better than the previous one, except look at that weird bump! I think that this item serves as a much better portrait because I this object oozes Josh personality too.

[Reading] Sum of Profiles

physionotrace?!!?!

It is really crazy to think that artists found a way to make volumetric captures in the 1800’s! They developed a technology that works surprisingly similar to Polycam and Depthkit. They made sculptures using the photos of the different profiles of a subject and a master sculptor would carefully smooth the linear junctions between the carved profiles and unite them into a harmonious and just likeness of the subject. It was a “marriage of art and industry” and reminds me of the fact that portraiture wasn’t seen as a serious art form, only a craft, for a long time because of its mimetic nature.

Here are some technologies discussed in the paper:

  • Sequential construction - Rodin

  • Photo sculpture - Willeme

  • Mechanical sculpture/automatic sculpture - Willeme

  • Pantograph?

  • Physionotrace - Chrétien

  • “Gravure numismatique” - Collas

  • Smoke screen technology - Claudet

Advantages of this volumetric capture:

  • Microscopic subjects could be transformed into sculpture in very large proportions

  • Time saved and commensurate economic gain

  • “The advantage of the mechanical process was that it allowed the sculptor an amount of freedom to conceptualize and cultivate inspiration”

  • Realism

Resources

Sculpture as the Sum of Its Profiles: Fraincois Willeme and Photosculpture in France, 1859-1868

[ITP: Designing Your Synth Voice] Ornament and Crime

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ornament & crime, o_C

  • Eurorack module running off of a Teensy 3.2

    • Basically a DAC breakout board with OLED display

    • It’s a “polymorphic CV generator”

      • Polymorphic = something that has multiple forms (?)

  • 4 precision CV outputs, 4 CV inputs

  • This is a post-capitalist, open source project

  • Comes with 10 different apps

    • Digital ASR (analog shift register) called “copier machine”

    • 4 channel pitch quantizer

    • Wave table quad LFO

    • Quad VC envelope generator

    • Etc, etc, etc

Control Voltage (CV) refresher

I watched these two weird videos from the Moog Foundation about CV. Here are my key takeaways:

  • “Voltage control just acts as a means of control that’s just like a hand on a knob”

    • It’s a robot hand, which you can tell what to do in a way that you want it

  • Simple electrical automation to cause changes over time using voltage

reverb and shimmer

Teensy Examples

TB303 Acid Button Press

Button 0 triggers an envelope and plays a random note in a hard coded scale. Button 1 cycles through the different wave types. Button 2 changes the octave of the notes. A15 is the filter attack time, A16 is the filter resonance, A17 is the envelope release time

TB303 Acid Generator

The gui output is the same as the example above. This sketch plays continuous tones to the Teensy’s audio output, a random note from a hard coded scale. The tempo of the playback can be changed by adjusting the potentiometer on A14. A15 affects the filter attack time. The knob on A16 affects the filter resonance. A17 affects the envelope release time.

To the right is the serial monitor output which prints the current MIDI value and its corresponding frequency.

Random Gate Generator

This sketch is basically just the blink sketch but on a random interval. This can be used to trigger external microcontrollers or hardware.

A gate is a signal type that is passed around inside a modular synthesizer. It jumps to a high level when a new note is supposed to start and stays “on” for the notes duration.

Resources

https://ornament-and-cri.me/

Ornament & Crime tutorial/review

What is polymorphism?

O & C on PJRC

O & C quantizer tutorial

O & C chord generation tutorial

CV from Moog Foundation 1

CV from Moog Foundation 2

Week 6 Teensy Examples

Gate definition

[ITP: Paper Engineering] Final Project - Stomach!

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For my final project for my paper engineering class I wanted to create something that could be a piece of my thesis. I’m basically constructing pieces of my own body to make a full self-portrait. I set out to make a pop up book exploring how I experience my stomach: what it eats, what it feels, how it exists. This post describes the process of creating Thoughts for Food, a illustrated journey to my stomach.

Sketch

Here is my quick story board sketch for my pop up book and some random notes. These ideas and sketches were evolving through the whole process of creating this book. One thing I learned is to take my time in the sketching and writing stage because incomplete thoughts and ideas became road blocks in the future.

Prototyping

When it came to executing, I tried my best to follow the method Sam taught us in class to not think too much but just start cutting and gluing paper together. I bought myself a whole stack of white card stock and prototyped with that only so I wouldn’t be so precious about it.

Accordion mouth mechanism

This design was inspired by an Instagram post by @paperjulia. I took a couple of screen shots of the video and was able to replicate the accordion mechanism to create a throat.

Basic tab mechanism

Spiral stomach

I really wanted to visualize the feeling I get in my stomach when I’m anxious. My stomach gets really tense, feels like it has dropped, or there’s a deep pit in there. It sometimes feels tingly and churning. I tried embodying this feeling through a few paper iterations.

winner!

Flip tabs and spinning wheel

These next two mechanisms were inspired by @paperjulia too. This project and this one is so great! All my anxieties swirling around in my stomach, what else could you want?!

Process

Here are some of my process shots making the pop up spreads.

Once I had all the pages constructed, I needed to glue them into spreads. Then I glued all the spreads together so I could flip through them like a book. This process required a lot of holding, smushing, and paper massaging to get everything glued down all the way. The paper sometimes became kind of wavy from the glue. Getting stuff lined up wasn’t as easy as it seemed, but I ended up letting go of perfection and leaning into the hand-made. In the off-time, my work was being pressed by two large books on my table.

Binding nightmare

Let me just say … I thought binding would be hard and it was!!!! Silly me left it for the day of my documentation appointment. Being in a rush didn’t help the situation.

First off, I found out that you could buy scrap mat board at Michaels which is pretty cool. It was super hard to cut through with my tiny little knife. I made the covers the same width as my content and an inch taller. I cut this puny little strip of board for the spine of the book using the height of my book content to figure out the width. I used duck tape, like Sam demoed in class, to create this beautiful cover.

I found out this cover I made did not work at all when I tried gluing my content in.

Here’s the golden rule: ✨When the spine is too wide the book can’t open all the way. When the spine is too small the book doesn’t close all the way.✨

I ended up getting some advice from Ian and Phil in the shop and I decided to remove the small strip of mat altogether. I ended up sandwiching the content between the covers, squishing it, and then taping the spine to get the correct spacing. I ended up re-doing this 2 more times because I got greedy, wanting the book to open all the way. I eventually reached a happy medium but my pop up book does not open up the full 180 degrees.

To finish up, I wrapped the cover in paper and glued on the cover image. Another thing I found was that the more I glued the pages together, the more fragile the mechanisms became and harder they were to operate in bound format. So, kind of a bummer.

Final Product

I got these amazing images taken by the ITP Documentation Lab.

Messes

Paper projects are a lot of work and take a lot of set up / clean up / shuffling of materials.

[ITP: Designing Your Synth Voice] I've Burntout!

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Lol I’m so done, but remember this?!

I recently found this slide from Jesse’s earlier lectures and I think I should keep on referring to it! It’s so hard to understand what kind of stuff will go into the final modules we’re supposed to create for this class but this visual makes it more digestible. Maybe I will make a synth with all of that stuff in it?!

Week 5 Teensy Examples

wav2Sketch

wav2Sketch is a library that converts wav files into data arrays that can be played from on-board memory. This example triggers a different wav file to be played when one of the four buttons is pressed.

This is what my teensy setup is looking like these days!

Basic sampler

This example works the same as the previous one except that the wav files played are uploaded to an SD card and installed into the audio shield.

C Major seventh

Alriiiiight, below is what the gui output looks like, but I’m having a hard time understanding how the code works. The voice1Setup() functions are all called in the sketch's setup() function, so they are only executed once. I can see that the function is assigning a note (frequency) from the c major scale to a waveform but I have no idea what the potentiometers are doing in that case. So buttons 0, 1, 2, and 3 are playing 0, 2, 4, and 6 of the c major scale. The last button, 4, changes the octave of the scale.

Midi C major seventh

The gui for this example looks exactly the same as the example above. Here, instead of using specific frequencies for the notes, we are using midi to define the notes of the scale (and the midi to frequency library). I don’t think the fifth button (button 4) does anything. Nothing seems to change when I turn the knobs either.

I think the purpose of modulating the waveform and putting it through an LFO is what gives the notes that dreamy, vibe-y, echo-y bedroom pop sound.

Memory Usage

This example is playing a pink noise + sine wave note repeatedly. I have no idea what the Fast Fourier Transform is doing. The sketch prints out the memory usage of the various stages of the code. It can help to determine if you need to allocate more or less onboard memory to run a sketch. Sending “s” over serial slows the speed of the sketch and “f” makes it go faster.

Jesse’s VCV Rack Demo

I went through Jesse’s VCV Rack demo and this is the patch I ended up with (lol the same one he showed). I really found following along with this video to be super helpful in my understanding of patching. Below I collected some of my notes.

  • MIDI = messaging protocol which can contain information about pitch, trigger, velocity, etc

  • VCO = voltage controlled oscillator

  • VCA = voltage controlled amplifier —> signal intensity

  • CV = control voltage to modulate a signal

  • ADSR = attack, decay, sustain, release in terms of an envelope

  • Gate output —> gate input?

  • V/OCT connection gives different pitches (voltages) for the MIDI keys/notes

  • VCF = voltage controlled filter (low pass, high pass, band pass), adjustable frequency cut off

  • Quantizer = mapping frequencies being played to the nearest active value of the quantizer

Assignment

I would really love to make an arpeggiator! Gonna ask Jesse for some help!

Resources

Jesse’s week 5 examples

PJRC Audio Gui Tool

Jesse’s VCV Rack demo

[ITP: Thesis II] User Testing Day

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There’s really a short in my brain now

I got my new, beautiful boards from JLCPCB this week. I feel the revision was totally worth it! I love the look of the black solder mask and the white silkscreen.

During this last week, I went through the same process as before to populate my new circuit boards. I give more details on this in a previous blog post.

The problems begin…

After the boards got populated I had to do my least favorite hardware task: debugging. Below you can see I had an issue with one board, not all the LEDs were lighting up as they should. Since the circuit is so simple, I know the issue is an unconnected or dead LED. I removed that pixel and you can see in the image on the right that one pad didn’t get soldered because the paste didn’t reflow. Replacing the LED fixed it!

Broken LED chain

Unsoldered LED pad

Here you can see my fabulous, new mechanism for connecting the two boards together. At this point, all 160 LEDs were lighting up perfect! I soldered the two boards together, assembled the sculpture, and left for the night.

In the morning I tried powering my brain and I had a short. This was super frustrating because I tested the circuit at every step of population (or so I thought!). After some debugging with my multimeter, I realized my bigger, badder, stronger pads I used to solder the two boards together were actually shorting power of one board to ground of the other. I had to desolder the two boards and re-attach using hot glue like you see below.

This is the problem in my schematic

Here’s the fix in EAGLE and I’ve updated my repo with brains V12 which don’t have this shorting problem! Ground ground ground ground ground ground ground

She’s beautiful and she works! :’)

User Testing Day!

Here are some pics from user testing with other thesis students. Somehow, brain v1 broke on the trip over from my staging space to the user testing classroom! It’s really perplexing and frustrating, but something I need debug in the future.

Here’s some feedback I received that could be helpful:

  • Try free writing about what the project/process means to me

  • I can put parts of myself (nails, hair, eyelashes) into the resin knobs

  • All the sculptures seem like they are from a different POV, watching yourself from the outside

  • Include the drawn portraits as decoration, maybe people can make their own?

  • Face synth - play back samples of voice reading back personal texts

References

Blog post with circuit board population process

EAGLE files for brain v12

[ITP: Designing Your Synth Voice] Group Work??! Yuck

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In class examples

Here were some VCV rack examples we did in class 02/12/24. These might be helpful for future Priyanka (or anyone else).

Amplitude oscillation

Frequency oscillation

Envelopes —> ADSR

Sequencer

Quantizer

Also in class we learned about line inputs and outputs. Line level is a standard used typically with gear that has the ability to adjust the volume/gain, such as a mixer or amplifier. It’s approximately 1.75V which is not enough to power headphones. The Teensy audio shield has mono left and right channel outputs.

Assignment

Hi Jesse. This week I organized the Stupid Hackathon and mentally I am here… everybody shut up on this floor. Everybody shut up in this department.

This week I got a new breadboard and a Teensy 4.1 because I realized I would quickly run out of IO pins on the 4.0. A big task for me was soldering all the headers for my new Teensy and getting my buttons and potentiometers set up again.

This was a two week assignment to use the line in/line out pins to patch into another person’s synth setup. I was on a three person team with Tres and Q. This was kind of a brain-breaking practice because I had an untested, brand new setup and I think Tres was having some hardware issues.

We started with the pass through example, which seemed to work for me and Tres. Then we tried to get all three synths working together. Here’s some documentation of us jamming together. Tres’s line out was connected to my line in and my line out was going into Q’s line in. I’m not really sure what’s going on here. Tres has some LFO and modulation going on. I tried getting the reverb example going. Q also had something going on in their setup but the best part was the drum they had setup on the button (you can hear it at the beginning of the clip). Overall, no idea whats going on…

Code Examples, audio pass through

Wav player

Delay module

Bitcrusher module

Filter module

Envelope module

I’m also really curious about building a sequencer at some point, I think. I watched some videos and saw people’s really cool synths they’re making. I’ve linked some inspo’s below for future reference.

Resources

Everybody shut up in this world

Jesse’s week 4 examples

David Wieland’s sequencer module

Praj’s Portable synth documentation (comprehensive)

Praj building his synth (with Teensy)

Brendan Byrne’s Theseus

[ITP: Paper Engineering] Build off of a box

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Background

In class last week, Sam had us build a box out of paper. As far as I understood, the assignment was to make this box into … something by adding to it or cutting stuff out. For some reason, I had a really hard time thinking about what I could make out of this box. I did some inspiration searching but all I could think about was making the box into a house, or a robot, or a building or making a fancy box, or … thinking outside the box?! At some point I came across tunnel books, which I really love, and those are kind of box-like right? Anyway, I drew up a sketch to make a tunnel book-inspired face box.

Process

Final Product

[ITP: Paper Engineering] Pull tab Valentines

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Background

For this assignment we were supposed to build off of a pop-up cube. I was not inspired by the cube. I did not do that.

In class last week we learned about pull tab mechanisms. My thesis deals with mechanism and self portraiture, and I was really really inspired by this music video showed in class. I thought I would try to mock up what a paper self portrait might look like.

Process

I followed this tutorial from the Pop-Up Channel to create the mouth mechanism and kind of free-balled the eye tab structure. Here are some process shots.

Final Product

Valentines for my love

I also created this pop up valentine for my boyfriend following this awesome tutorial.

[ITP: Thesis II] Prototypes

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Brainstorming

Now that my brain is in a good place, I needed to revisit the rest of my body. I started by doing a sweeping check: what is my experience in my body? What are my body interfaces? This is sometimes really hard for me because I’m usually unconnected from my body and constantly live in my anxieties.

I’m hoping to roll my final project for my synth class into my thesis and I had this genius idea of creating an interFACE to go along with my brain. I did a really wild and free sketch of what this analog synth interFACE might look like in my dreams. Can I think of my face as a series of inputs and outputs?

Paper Prototyping

Paper Portrait

In my paper engineering class, I played around with the concept of a paper self-portrait. You can find more info on my process at this blog post.

Nipple Knob

I also CANNOT LET GO of this idea I developed with my friend Elyana last semester of a nipple-shaped knob to attach to potentiometers. I did a simple prototype using some pink paper. I think this prototype really the purpose of visualizing the form but for the more developed version I thought I might have to model the knob in 3D and print it. I did book some office hours with Phil, and normally he’s preaching the gospel of Fusion, but he actually recommended I attempt doing a life cast. I love this idea because it feels more aligned with self-portraiture. So, I’ve ordered all the goops and powders (alginate life cast, plaster of paris, silicone, and resin) to make my own molds and knobs. More on that later …

Stomach

I am also pondering what a paper sculpture of my stomach may look like (I’m starting to think about my final for paper engineering). My stomach is usually the first to notify me when I’m anxious. It feels like there’s a hole, it’s infinite, churning, turning, something moving around in there. I tried to embody that with this quick paper prototype.

Feedback from Class

Lol I have some scribbled notes in my notebook and IDK what they mean anymore. Here’s what I can make out:

  • My project is humanizing tech, symbolizes your body on tech

  • Operation game

  • Tactile, physical

Q: Does my project need something soft?

Also! I love it here! Here are my friends singing me happy birthday🥹❤️

Talked to Ali

Here are some references and ideas Ali shared with me:

  • David Hammons - uses the body as an art medium, body prints

  • Bodies exhibition … there are a lot of these!

  • Body Constructs @ MoMA

  • Slim Goodbody —> need to watch, I feel like this is really relevant because it is cheesy and humorous. Totally my vibe

  • Herman’s Head - giving characters to different personalities of self

  • Is my thesis an exhibit? Are these sculptures prototypes for larger works? Scan them, put them in VR and scale them up? Recordings of self?

[ITP: Designing Your Synth Voice] Synth Club and Envelopes

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IDM Synth Club with Luke Dubois

Do not miss an opportunity to check out the IDM Audio Lab. Go there!

The lab is open to everyone and the people involved there are very knowledgeable. I went with Tres and we still don’t know enough about synths to get any sounds/beats working on the Serge modular synth we had some fun messing around with synthesizers that are non-modular (the ones with piano keys!). They provide super thorough documentation on how to use the synths on their website.

VCV Rack

I downloaded and played with VCV Rack a bit. I don’t really know what I am doing yet but it is fun to see how turning the knobs and changing up the patches changes the sound output. It will be good to use this to prototype different patches.

Envelopes, VCA, LFO

I’m not getting audio out of my headphones anymore when they’re connected to my teensy so I wasn’t able to complete this homework yet.

I have, however, been thinking about what my completed synthesizer might look like. I’m hoping to make an interFACE as part of my thesis which is about self-portraiture, sculpture, interface, and embodiment! Here’s a CRAZY scribble on some things I’m thinking about:

[Update 03/08] Examples from Class

This code comes from Jesse’s GitHub repo. I’m finding it helpful to go through the examples and see if I can understand what’s going on in synth land…

Envelope with harmonics

One button triggers the envelope (or the playing of a note) and another button cycles through different wave types (sine, pulse, triangle, sawtooth, and square). When you press the trigger button, four waveforms play all at once, one octave apart, creating harmonics. Four potentiometers control the attack, decay, sustain, and release of each note.

Envelope with harmonics and filter with LFO🤯

The two buttons have the same function in this example. One button triggers the envelope but there’s a continuous signal playing simultaneously —? don’t really know whats going on in this one

It is at this point that I had a 1.5 hr office hour with Jesse because I had some weirdness with my circuit and turns out I do not know how to wire up a button!!!!🤬

Now that I think this hardware and sketch is working as it should, I can confirm that the two buttons and the potentiometers have the same functions as the earlier example but the potentiometer on A17 adjusts the frequency of the LFO. As I increase the LFO frequency it increases the speed and the number of wobbles I heard on the audio output.

Noise Envelope

This example plays a series of noise envelopes. Each button calls a function that shapes the noise into a hi hat, swell, click pop, or keyboard key sound. A potentiometer adjusts the amplitude of the envelopes.

FM Voice LFO Modulation

This example actually only uses one button. The potentiometer on A14 adjusts the frequency of of waveform 1. Potentiometer A15 adjusts the amplitude. The potentiometer on A16 adjusts the frequency and A17 adjusts the amplitude of waveform 2. From what I can understand, waveform 1 is the modulator frequency for frequency modulation of waveform 2.

FM Voice LFO and Envelope Modulation

I am not actually sure what this example does but it sounds cool. When I press button 0, it plays a note which kinda sounds like a laser gun sound effect. Turning potentiometer A17 seems to make the note longer and A14 seems to change something with the pitch. From looking at the code, I don’t think A15 does anything.

Code LFO

A low frequency oscillator is inaudible and modulates signals to slowly alter parameters over time. Button 0 triggers the envelope and button 1 changes the shape of the wave. This code generates a sine wave LFO (attack) and the potentiometers control the decay, sustain, and release of the envelope.

[ITP: Designing Your Synth Voice] Baby's First Synth

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For this week’s homework, I set up my Teensy 4.0 and the Audio Shield using the Audio Workshop tutorial from PJRC as a starting point. Here’s how my hardware is hooked up for now:

While I’m just getting started with analog synthesis, I thought I would just go through the examples shown in class.

Waveform

This example just lets you adjust the frequency of waveform output by turning a potentiometer. The i2s block is included in basically all applications of the Audio Library because it transmits 16-bit stereo audio to the shield.

Waveform with button cycle

This example is the same as the last one but you can cycle through different shape for the sound wave (sine, square, triangle, pulse, sawtooth) using a button press. Same flow diagram as the previous example.

Harmonics

Again a button controls the shape of the signal. The sketch plays a waveform and signals one and two octaves below. Potentiometers control the gain of the three waves. The mixer block combines up to four audio signals together.

Mixer software block

Harmonics with filter

In this example, the button does its thing. The first two potentiometers control the gain of a base frequency and its harmonic (base frequency / 2). The third potentiometer changes the cutoff frequency of a low pass filer.

Detuning

In this example, the first potentiometer controls the base frequency. A second potentiometer controls the detuned frequency. I’m pretty sure when these two waves are played at the same time it creates beats.

Detuning with filter

Same detuning strategy as above but the third potentiometer controls the cut off frequency of a high pass filter.

I ended up skipping the last example from the class Github because it required SD card playback. Don’t have one of those yet. One weird thing I did encounter is that the headphone jack on the Audio Shield is a little bit iffy. Like my headphones need to be plugged in at just the right depth to heard any audio, bumping it could affect the output…

References

Class 2 Github repo

PJRC Audio Workshop Tutorial

[ITP: Thesis II] Here's what you missed on Thesis...

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This is the recap blog post. If you need more context check out my last blog post.

I finished and presented my brain at the ITP Winter show. Yay!

I also finished reading the article “Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life” by Jessica Riskin and started a new book on “Portraiture” by Shearer West. I’m hoping this will give me good insight and historical context for my thesis project which will ultimately (hopefully) be a portrait.

I also revised my circuit boards to make an even better brain based on some feedback from my bud Nick Poole (at SparkFun). Here’s what I updated:

  • Add “pin 1” indicators outside of LED package

  • Add more, bigger electromechanical pads for soldering the two boards together. Nick gave me a tip that putting a via through the pad could work as a rivet to make the connection even stronger.

  • Switch header pins to qwiic connectors to make connecting easier

  • Add silkscreen to label boards and pins. Add silk screen brain folds.

I used SparkFun’s Buzzard tool to generate the silkscreen. I was able to draw the folds of the brain in Illustrator and import them into EAGLE using the Buzzard Image importer. I ordered my boards on 02/04 and have all my parts ready to build them once I have boards in hand. Super exciting!

Buzzard test with some scaling issues

Buzzard settings

Brain with hand-drawn folds

PCBs ordered!!

I did a tiny bit of reflection and am starting to think through more “body interfaces”. It’s giving Operation vibes. Maybe I’m just Cavity Sam…

No ground breaking ideas yet, but I am making my own synth in another ITP class. I’m hoping to fabricate an interFACE for the form of the analog synthesizer. A face for my brain. More updates about that to come.

Here’s what I’m planning on doing next:

  • Try out motor system for washing machine/womb. Finish the sculpture and document.

  • Prototype: 3D model and print nipples for potentiometer knobs in Fusion (oh no!)

  • Sketch/scribble some self portraits. Reflect on how you see your self.

  • Think through more body interfaces. How do you exist in your own body?

References

https://sparkfunx.github.io/Buzzard/

https://github.com/sparkfunX/Buzzard/wiki/Image-Importer

[ITP: Designing Your Synthetic Voice] Cringe Comfort

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I used to have a much stronger relationship with my music taste. My taste in music used to mean so much to me and was a big part of my identity in high school. I mostly listened to emo, rock, alternative, bla bla in my formative years. I used to rip and burn all my friends CD’s and go to concerts. I took pride in being a snob haha. Music was such a big part of my life, I had played classical piano for years, violin in my high school orchestra, and even picked up guitar for a bit. Here I am playing a song at my senior recital.

It got too exhausting trying to keep up with all the more informed music-people so these days I’m a really casual listener, maybe even too casual. I’ve lost track of my own tastes and preferences. I’ll basically listen to whatever Spotify tells me I like.

Voice of the past

Usually I prefer music played by a band with traditional instruments, a lot of like indie, folk, and R&B, but I started to think a bit about my relationship with electronic music. I listened to some albums that I still really like that have some electronic components and tried to identify what I liked about them. Here are some era’s of past-Priyanka music taste:

Height of 2012 indie hipster cringe core

It wasn’t cringe at the time, but I sometimes do looking back on what I loved. Cringe isn’t always bad, I think it’s something to lean into! Listening to this music made me into the person I am today. We’re talking Washed Out, Passion Pit, The Postal Service, Crystal Castles, Grimes, MGMT, Kishi Bashi …

One of my favorite albums from that era is Merriweather Post Pavilion by Animal Collective.

What I like about it: floaty, mushy, reverb, airy, sparkly, punchy, vocals, what’s he saying?!, kinda feels like you’re outside, daylight, rhythm

80’s alternative synth pop? art pop? dream pop?

Think Talking Heads, Kate Bush, and Cocteau Twins. Honestly, I’m so music illiterate, I’m not really sure if these truly fall under this genre. I feel like I can hear electronic components in this music sometimes, but are they even using any synths? Maybe!

Brotherhood by New Order

What I like about it: dark, crisp, fast, dynamic, sharp, moody, gloomy, whiny

90s House: World Clique, Deee-Lite

I guess I don’t really listen to any other 90s house but I had a phase where I listened to this album a lot.

What I like about it: punchy, beat, bass line, simple lyrics, simple melody, dance, fast, fun, repetitive, catchy, funky, organ, hard yet moments of softness, samples

<3 Mort Garson’s Plantasia <3

Real analog synth, right?! His artist profile pic on Spotify shows him sitting in front of one, so it better be!

What I like about it: whimsical, magical, can visualize a plant growing, triumphant, melodic, rhythmic, charming, uplifting, can focus on other things while listening but interesting enough to focus on the music as well

Makin my own electronic music

I also just remembered that I took a music technology class in my undergrad. We learned to work with DAW’s like Logic Pro and Ableton and I think I even messed around with the SuperCollider programming language. I uploaded some of my weird experiments to this SoundCloud profile.