-talk time = 5 min max; then get to making!
-great to start with playing a punched card (students can guess the song; discuss the different parts in action: teeth, vibration plate, crank, etc)
-then get into some history/slides (connection between looms, computers, punch cards, binary)
-sharpies, blank sheets, and hole punches (what does your name sound like? a phrase? a pattern?)
-introduce the online simulator
-introduce Adobe - to - laser workflow
-get experimental and explore extensions with electronics
-record student sound samples to use for following week
-label kits and clean up
We explored, with our students, ways to make sounds play with electronics. Microcontroller circuits were built to respond to inputs in the form of button pushes or changes in light. We used phototransistors to detect light changes, and trigger digital inputs in response to blocking light with opaque materials (such as the hole-punched strips). We demonstrated a prototype array of phototransistors that could read hole patterns, and trigger a few different sounds. The microcontroller was programmed to send out a serial string in response to inputs, and a Python code in the computer played a particular wav file in response to a particular serial string input. The Python code used the pygame library, which is simple to use for sounds and can play in several channels with sounds overlaid. The details are in the subpage below.
Music box electronics. Circuits and code.
In the first meeting, we recorded several sounds from students, individually and in concert, in anticipation of using them to make responsive sound projects in the second week.