Tongue Twisted: You Need Some Reverb With Those Bars?
My original concept for my final project was a clay sculpture of a head with its tongue sticking out, which ould play a song that I made. The texture of how the lyrics sound could be altered when the user moves around the tongue. When the tongue is flexed due to a flex sensor inside, the timbre of the voice will change.
This project is for anyone who likes to touch things. I can see this project is a bigger installation in a gallery, where the scale of this project is bigger and there are multiple sculptures that all tell a different story and hold their own aesthetic.
I wanted to do this project because I wanted to challenge myself by making a physical aspect and renew my knowledge on serial communication. Also, I really wanted to actually make music and expereince he process of making a song.
My first step was to make the sculpture. I used clay from Blick Art Materials and aluminum foil to stuff the center of the sculpture. This is how it turned out.
I then went on to make the song. My friend, Ryan, and I made a sampled a song and used FL Studios to create it. This took three whole days, but I really enjoyed using the equitment and learning the software. The song can be found here:
Next, I worked on my circuit. I needed my arduino to connect and receive information from my flex sensor. Here is what my circuit looked like:
I then went to work on connecting my circuit and P5.js sketched that played my song. I used different sources such as:
Unfortunately, with much effort, I did not figure it out. This obstacle made me alter my design and overall project. I decided to do a 2D model instead. I used P5.js and built a model around my original concept. I used the sound library, key pressed functions, and the reverb effect. When the song played, the user was able to click the screen and add a different value of reverb to the lyrics with every click. I was successful in doing that and the sketch can be found here: https://editor.p5js.org/yunglizard/sketches/BggAC-m64
This final project retaught me how to built circuits and use the arduino. It also taught me that I really like making music. I learned so much about FL studios and smapling. Most importantly I learned that my time managment skills are pretty horrible. I think that if I had given myself more time, I would have figured out the serial communication aspect of the project.
For my future works, I want to finally get serial communication down. I think that would add a layer to my projects that makes it more interactive. I also want to make a series of these clay sculptures and songs that may be part of a bigger story. Maybe even be in a gallery one day.
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