RUBBER CORD SENSOR -> ARDUINO -> PD
CONDUCTIVE YARN/ELASTIC YARN KNIT SENSOR -> ARDUINO -> PD
THOUGHTS/CONCLUSIONS
As it stands I think the knitted sensor works best; it gives more varied results and shrinks back to it’s original shape better than the rubber chord – which stays stretched out a little making it less than ideal for making a costume that has to stay up!
These two stretch sensors: the shop-bought rubber cord sensor and the knitted conductive yarn/elestic yarn sensor both achieve what I want them to do; they output serial data that I can transform into sound. At the moment these are very linear movements and fairly uninspiring (though I’m thrilled to get the mechanics working!). I have one more method to test and then I will go forward with the best way to proceed in my building of an instrument.
I thought that this would be the point – when my sensors were complete – that I’d be able to improvise and experiment with sound and be inspired by the quirks of the instrument to respond and duet with my voice and breath. However, I’ll admit I’m struggling to find inspiration for where to take this in terms of a performance beyond a simple drone. I have ideas for a performance that might lend itself more to a random sound rather than a linear one, so I’ll see where the 3rd method (stitching words/patterns into elastic) takes me, because I feel that this will produce more unpredicable results.
Alternatively I could make the PD code more complex and introduce more random elements on that end, because at the moment I’ve just built a very simple synthesiser.
