“Tone Flowers” installed in the Champlain College Gallery, Creative Media Capstone Show April 2018. Photo by Maxwell Brisben https://maxwellbrisben.smugmug.com/
Close up of “Tone Flowers”, showing assembled electronics package and photoresistor ‘stamen’. Photo by Maxwell Brisben https://maxwellbrisben.smugmug.com/
Close up of circuit. Each circuit was built with six single conductor external connections for ease of installation. Power bus (red wire) is along top and left edge of perfboard, ground bus (orange wire) along bottom and right edge. The oscillator is a simple square wave oscillator using the CD40106 hex schmidt trigger (left) with a resistor-capacitor loop, which in this case includes a tuning potentiometer (center). Output from potentiometer goes to op-amp (right) with a drain to ground via the photoresisor (center top, yellow/green wires). The resultant behavior of the photoresistor passes all signal to ground (silence) when under bright light and passes signal to the amp when brightness goes below threshold. The amplified signal goes into the speaker (blue/purple wires) Because the photoresistor drains the audio signal to the ground near the oscillator CR loop’s ground, the pitch of the oscillator is affected by the light level as well; this creates a pitch bend that resembles a natural human scream, which was an unexpected but ultimately welcomed side effect. Photo by Jakey Mumfie.
Pre-assembly flowers. Photo by Jakey Mumfie.
“Tone Flowers” is a garden of playable electronic flowers, each with an embedded analog tone generator and light sensor-controlled amplifier. The audience is able to interact with each individually by disrupting the light shining on the sensor, which causes the flower to emit a synthesized scream. Mounted on flexible posts and housed in brightly painted flower petals, this work combines the minimalist austerity often found in sound art installations with the whimsical yet confrontational aesthetics at the core of the DIY electronic music scene.
Electronics and Mixed Media
Creative Media Capstone Show, April 2018
Jakey Mumfie 