My ITP thesis, the EM Brace, is up and running. The EM Brace is a wearable device for physically engaging with ambient electromagnetic frequencies emitted by computers and other electronics. It does so by turning these frequencies into sounds that are sent into a “bass-shaker” speaker in the back of the device. Metallic arms reaching around the wearer help distribute the vibrations coming from the speaker.

Here are some testing videos and photos of fabrication and “guts” (preamp circuit, amp circuit, speaker). For specific component parts, check out the previous “thesis” entries.

I’m no great illustrator, but here’s a rough sketch of the device, scaling mistakes and all. From this perspective you would be facing the back of the wearer and the extended “arms” would be wrapped around the persons stomach.

Here’s a video of me testing out a half assembled version of the device. I’m using inductive coils to create sound from the electromagnetic waves emitted from my computer and surrounding electronics. These sounds are being amplified and sent into a bass shaker speaker. The bass shaker is installed inside the metal box, and the gooseneck “arm” I’m holding onto is rumbling with the sound, as is the whole box.

I plan on embedding this device into a leather vest of sorts with buckles on the front for tightening and fastening. The coils will extend down the arms into gloves.

I perfboarded my preamp circuit for my thesis project, the EM Brace. I’m using this circuit to boost the electromagnetic frequency signals before they are sent into the larger 40-watt amp that I’ve showed in previous posts. The circuit uses two OPA134 chips, which are really great audio preamp chips, so the mono signal is getting boosted twice. I based the circuit on the original Chu Moy headphone amp & used this site for help with the power supply, which requires negative and positive voltage (+4.5v and -4.5v). On the chu moy circuit, I changed the feedback resistors from 10k to 100k on the first chip and 1M ohm on the second chip. This yielded substantially greater amplification. My initial signals are weaker than signals that would come out of, say, an iPod or computer, so I don’t think I would change these resistors if I was building a headphone amp, as the original schematic yields plenty amplification to drive a pair of headphones.

Here’s a few photos of my ROUGH prototype. I’ll try to get a video up soon.


I’m using two phone pickup coils as EM antennas and sending the signals into two pre-amp circuits (which utilize the op134 chip as found in many DIY headphone amps) and sending the signals into the Ramsey amp I built.

This thing fits me well, and it rumbles in the presence of EM radiation, but it’s real loud because these tactile transducers have a range from 20-20k hz (the range of human hearing, natch), and thus they often get more screechy than vibratory. I don’t mind the sound, but it’s not what i’m after.

This prototype has led me to realize a couple of things.
1) I need to use bass shakers, which I’ve now procured. I’m using the Aura AST-1B-4.
2) I need to boost the signal more. Which means either more antenna or more pre-amp. Probably both. I plan on working on a new circuit tonight.

Of course, my thesis project is always in flux, and I regret not posting more about it more regularly as I think writing more would help me sort things out. So on that note, here’s a draft for my thesis abstract:

The vast majority of work in the field of human-computer interaction has involved programming computers to better sense and understand our inputs, yet little work has been done in terms of how we humans can better sense and understand computers. Computers, and electronics in general, reach out to us by creating fields of low and very low frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. These ubiquitous frequencies penetrate and permeate our bodies at a molecular level, so spatially intimate experiences with electronics can be understood as a merging of physical bodies with the computer’s electromagnetic embrace. As we humans have no natural means of sensing these frequencies, the “EM brace” provides a means of physically engaging with these frequencies by combining two of our natural senses, touch and hearing. The EM brace accentuates the microscopic merging of body/computer and the boundlessness of the quantum. As well, it points towards the ineluctable direction of human evolution towards the cybernetic post-human, an evolution that can be understood in terms of a Deleuzoguattarian becoming, specifically a becoming-electronic.

Yesterday I put together Ramsey’s UAM4 amplifier kit.

The amp is for my thesis project (see below). It’s an amazing amplifer. The board below is only 2.5 inches (!!), yet is able to produce 40watts mono or 20 watts stereo. It’s a partly surface mount unit, but not terribly difficult to put together. Just take your time, drink lots of water, stretch, and breath. Since it is a surface mount kit, you have to have tweezers, a magnifying glass, good solder, a small tip, some solder wick, and flux (this last one is a must). Don’t drink coffee either (jitters). Some of the capacitors are amazingly small, like I could fit dozens on my thumbnail. Luckily, the manufacturer supplies extra parts because sometimes the little pieces fly out of the tweezers and you can forget about finding them if they go far. I inserted my finger into the one of the pics below for scale.

This was my first surface mount work, and I have to thank p-comp allstars Todd Holoubek and Michale Chladil for their help.

Here’s the amp in action playing the Boredoms in stereo through two tactile transducers:

Here’s the slide show for my thesis midterm presentation. I haven’t blogged about my midterm in a while, and things have changed so here’s a quick update.

My thesis is tentatively called the EM brace, and it’s a wearable device for translating electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) into powerful sound waves that can be felt by the body. An antenna will be attached to the hand that can pick up EMF which will send those frequencies into a receiver/pre-amp that will turn the EM signals into audio waves. The audio waves will be sent into a powerful, compact amplifier which will give the signal enough juice to power some tactile transducers which will be attached to a brace structure that will wrap around the body. The tactile transducers are specially made to resonate whatever they are attached to, so the brace will vibrate strongly with the incoming signals.

I see this project as a way of engaging the body with the ambient electromagnetic signals that pass through us continually, as our bodies are essentially porous on a microscopic level. I’m still working out that kinks, so there will be more to come soon. Until now, enjoy the slideshow.

 

 MidTerm Presentation [0:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A really helpful interview for me right now.

My thesis project is forming into an installation in which network data is materialized sonically via tactile transducers fixed onto different objects. These transducers essentially turn the objects to which they are attached into speakers/resonant bodies. The transducers I’m using so far are four Rolen-Star transducers and two Vidsonix Sonic Ghost transducers.

Textual Context

Brandon Labelle’s “Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art”
This book has served as a guiding influence for this project. It has give me both a historical and aesthetic context with which to work with. It discusses sound art regards to installation, performance, composition and via the perspectives of architecture, environments, and locations. LaBelle approaches sound from a perspective informed by Nicholas Bourriaud’s theory of “Relational Aesthetics”, and Labelle continually and effectively stresses sound as a relational art. From the opening:

Sound is intrinsically and unignorably relational: it emanates, propagates, communicates, vibrates, and agitates; it leaves a body and enters others; it binds and unhinges, harmonizes and traumatizes; it sends a body moving, the mind dreaming, the air oscillating. It seemingly eludes definition, while having a profound effect. (Labelle, ix)

The section of the book with particular significance for my thesis is the final section, part 6: “Global Strings: Interpersonal and Network Space”. An excerpt:

What I want to underscore is the parallel tendencies in thinking through listening and media, for both extend individual sensibilities, distributing experience into a broader understanding of collectivity whereby the self is always implicated within surrounding space, no longer proximate but extended to global proportions . . . . I want to suggest that listening, and by extension understandings of sound, can lend itself to a recognizing of digital media: that the operations of sound, as media and phenomena, may converse with questions of telecommunications, digital networks, and by extension, the contemporary conditions of the digital age . . . . Such a description inevitably hopes that what we may recognize, in the incoming and outgoing flux of emails, SMS messages, Web-casting, satellite monitoring, hacking, and the like, a complex act of communication we might call a “listening that inhabits” . . . one that is active out there, as a process of finding home, making connections, creating space across digital networks–a listening that builds architectures out of interaction. (Labelle, 247-248)

External Work Context

David Tudor’s Rainforest IV (1973)
Rainforest IV is the major work of a David Tudor’s decade long continuum of experiments in resonance. Tudor and the group Composer’s Inside Electronics created a set of hanging sculptures that function as speakers via tactile transducers (specifically, the Rolen-Star tactile transducer listed above). When these transducers are fixed onto an object, incoming audio/electrical signals are transformed into audible sound by using the object as a speaker/resonant body. Rainforest IV was a collaborative piece, open to inclusion and participation to anyone who wished to join. It was Tudor’s way “giving the piece away”. The Rainforest series was exhibited throughout the world and in its first incarnation was accompanied by Merce Cunnigham’s dance company as part of the piece of the same name.

Video of a realisation of Rainforest.
Internal Work Context

My Device for Finding the Inherent Sonority of Objects (2007)
I see my thesis as a continuation of my own investigations into resonance. It emerges out of my experience as a percussionist and my fascination with cymbals. This device is housed in a collectible Rambo lunch box, and the circuit takes a 9 volt battery. I see this device as a hacked object that hacks other objects by turning them into mediums of sound/resonant bodies via a custom built piezo driver, supplanting their intended use-value in the process. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s musings on “the collector”, I decided to use a collectible object to house the circuit in because I feel like collecting objects can be understood as a precursor to hacking objects in that collecting, like hacking, is an attempt at replace commodity value for values outside of the “cycle of exchange”.

I attached this devices piezo driver to a cymbal, but with little result. There just wasn’t enough power. Funnily enough, what the device best resonated/hacked was itself, as it’s a mostly empty metal lunchbox.
More about this device>>