Music 539: Interactive Arts Technologies

Perry Cook prc@cs.princeton.edu
Mondays, 2:00-4:50
Room 10?, Woolworth Music Building

---

This seminar will cover technologies and techniques for making interactive arts projects, exhibits, installations, and performances. Sensors, signal processing, and display systems will be covered. We'll look at case studies of specific projects, and make some of our own as well.

---

Syllabus As It Develops:

• Week 1: Introductions, discussions, Sensors 1:
  Sensors 1: Piezo and Force Sensors
  Electronics Intro
  Physics Intro

  Resistance, Voltage, Current, Charge, Energy,
  Work, Mass, Power, Force, Velocity, Acceleration,
  Conservation of Mass, Conservation of Energy,
  Conservation of Charge, Avogadro's Number
  
  

• Week 2:
  Sensors 2: More Resistors, Capacitance
  More Voltage, Current, Charge, and Resistance
  Voltage Division (series Resistors), Potentiometers
  A to D converters, BasicStampII freqout function,
  FSR + Resistor -> frequency display
  PhotoCells (light sensitive resistors)
  Capacitance, Capacitors
• Week 3:
  Sensors 3: More Capacitance, BasicStampII RCTime Function
  Theremin, Radio Baton, Piezo-Electric Sensors (displays)
  Inductance, Magnetic Fields, Right Hand Rule,
  Mutual Inductance
• Week 4:
  Speakers, Motors, and other Muscles
  Solenoids, DC Motors, Servos, Stepper Motors
  BasicStampII PulseOut function
• Week 5:
  Systems: Serial Communication, RS232, Infrared, RF
  BasicStampII serout and serin functions.
• BREAK WEEK
• Week 6:
  MIDI communications, more Serial, sending
  MIDI with the BasicStampII, some of Perry's Instruments
  Research Presentations I
  • Mary: Musical Crib (KidsII) and Green Drum Thing
  • Laurie: Things from the Web:
    
    • "Spirit Catcher", "Heavy Breathing", and "Rain Sphere"
    • Kenneth Rinaldo stuff:
      • Mediated Encounters and Here too
      • The Flock and Here Too
      • Delicate Balance
      • Technology Recapitulates Phylogeny and Here Too
  • Colby: Mamoru Fujieda and the Plantron
  • Van: Toshi Iwai's Piano
• Week 7:
  Signal Processing and Filter Intro

---

Each participant will be expected to complete two major assignments (with a proposal, progress report, and final demonstration/presentation for the 2nd one):

• By Week-4: Pick an existing or past art piece that is of interest. Analyze the technologies and techniques used. Write a 4-page description of those, and do a 15-minute presentation to the class about the piece.
• By week-8 (midterm): propose your project: Design (and maybe construct some prototype) a piece of your own. Dance, installation, prosthetic addition to an existing instrument, electronic guerilla art, etc., agreed upon by me.
• By week-12: project progress report (what you've figured out, what's left to do).
• By Week 15:Either a demonstration or presentation (25 min.) of your project is due by end of semester.

---

Topics to be Covered:

These are pretty much in order, the numbers don't necessarily imply weeks.

1) Sensors: Force, proximity, whatever
2) Communication: infrared and wireless
3) Microprocessors and DSP chips
4) Signal Processing: effects, filters, pattern recogn.
5) Motors and other muscles
6) Project Research Presentations
7) More Signal Processing
8) Video: As Input
9) Speakers, 3D sound
10) Video (and Light): As Output
11) More Stuff
12) Project Presentations

---