Like most of my projects this one started as a little scribble on a piece of paper about a year ago. I have always been fascinated by the seemingly chaotic patterns everywhere in nature. The way ants organize themselves, the behavior of swarming locusts, even down to the microscopic level of bacteria competing with each other to survive. Over the last year I tried to duplicate some of this behavior with analog electronics but still felt there was something missing. In this project I tried combining both worlds in a single installation.
I used an arduino to process the incoming signals from the light sensitive sensors and turn them into midi messages. As soon as a difference in light level is detected it plays a note with a pitch corresponding to the amount of light hitting the sensor. This information then goes into Ableton Live wich creates all the sounds. There is also a switch to select the 4 different modes: instruments, synthesis, samples and drums.
The code is free to use by anyone and might be usefull if your interested in translating analog voltages into midi messages on different midi channels.
/edit 13-02-2012
Somehow bits of the code get mangled as I upload them with the code brackets so I removed the code. If you’re interested you can always send me an email and Ill send you the code.
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I would be interested in the Ableton setup you use. Are you going to make it available as well?
It’s just a very basic patch with 4 different sets of sounds corresponding to the 4 different midi channels sent by the device. It also relies heavily on other software(midipipe) to process the raw midi data. If you’re still interested in the ableton liveset you can email me and I’ll send you a copy.
Hi Jochem,
Haha wat een idee! En het werkt nog ook
Goed bezig, creatieve broer!
Groetjes Simone
he zusje!
haha, bedankt!