jörg piringer - [digital sound visual interactive poetry music robotics etc.]

trying out flattr

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2010-08-19T21:54:20Z

i finally decided to try out flattr not primarily to make money but rather to find out for myself if that could be a way to show appreciation of internet content.

if you don't know what flattr is, here's the video:

gravity clock for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2010-04-03T20:53:42Z

Watching the time pass has never been so beautiful!

gravity clock visualizes the passage of time by the permanent destruction and reconstruction of the clock-face.

Every second the hand breaks numbers out of the dial and lets them drop to the floor where they get buried by the following numbers and eventually wither away to make room for the endless succession of time.

Watch the video here:
http://joerg.piringer.net/gravityclock
the video only shows the iPhone version but it‘s designed for iPad as well.

Features:
- realistic gravity/physics simulation, numbers fall as if they were real objects
- digital and analog mode
- in analog mode: every minute the minutes drop, every 15 minutes a quarter of the seconds fall and finally at noon and midnight all seconds drop.
- in digital mode: when the time changes the old numbers are dropped
- in digital mode: 24h and 12h hour mode
- prevents iPhone or iPod touch from sleeping
- universal app supports iPhone/iPod touch AND iPad (in native resolution)
- looks perfect in an iPhone/iPad-dock

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz for iPhone and iPod touch

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2010-03-04T10:45:44Z

Create and control tiny sound-creatures in the shape of letters that

react to gravity or each other and generate rhythms and soundscapes.

http://joerg.piringer.net/abcdefg

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz is a sound toy, a performance tool and an art
work in its own right. You can play with the letter-creatures and watch
and listen how they interact with each other or use them to produce
soundscapes like you would with an electronic musical instrument.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz blends art, biology, fun and physics to
create a unique, dynamic and interactive sound ecology.

This app is the result of jörg piringer's ongoing research of vocal
sounds and their relation to dynamic typography in the form of
performance, video and software art.

sorted speech 1

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2009-12-29T14:14:36Z

an automatic cut-up experiment.

using speech recognition i analyzed a video of a speech by barack obama. i then sorted the snippets (containing a word each) alphabetically.
this video is only an excerpt of the full a-z sequence.

opto organ

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2009-02-16T17:07:06Z

another instrument i made recently: a musical instrument inspired by the optigan (a light-tone instrument and a kind of predecessor of the sampler).
my instrument generates the tone with a light depended resistor which kann be controlled by an LED. the speed and patterns on the disc determine the frequency and shape of the resulting wave form.
currently it has 8 keys (8 different pitches) and a manual pitch bend.

the instrument was made from an old cd-walkman 8 LDRs & 8 LEDs plus some passive components, 8 switches and voltage regulator.

UPDATE: more info like schematics & code after the break.

disc images. just print them on some transparencies cut them and play them: discs.zip

processing sketch to create your own discs: optigan-processing.zip

schematics of the opto-organ. it's really simple. just some leds with push buttons and a row of LDRs and a voltage divider: opto-organ.pdf

relay organ

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2009-02-11T15:40:38Z

i made a musical instrument inspired by elisha gray's "musical telgraph" one of the first electric/electronic musical instruments ever.
it's basically a relay oscillator than be "tuned" to various frequencies via midi controlled capacitors.
in the video i use a tenori-on as a midi sequencer. the video of the tenori-on is not totally in sync with the rest of the video but you should get an idea.

the sound is recorded with a self-built piezo contact mic and a coil taken from a solenoid.

text & image generator

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2008-08-08T15:21:50Z

my latest project is online:

http://joerg.piringer.net/vy2ms/

the project vy2ms gives customs officers, agencies and police forces new labor. it generates documents that can be read, searched and deciphered by otherwise underemployed personal. it challenges them with enigmatic language and mysterious images and diagrams.

the underlying program is a quite complex document generator. it generates images with various algorithms from simple randomness to cellular automata.

the texts are generated with some computer linguistic algorithms: first the program generates a set of syllables with a specific letter distribution. out of this set of syllables a number of nouns, verbs, articles and other words are generated. these are then joined together to sentence following a simple grammar and a set of possible sentence structures.

background information
on july 16th, 2008 the US department of homeland security disclosed policies regarding border search of information:
officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons [...] The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' " (washington post, august 1st, 2008)

there's little doubt that other countries or unions of countries would like to adopt similar policies in the future. the european union is currently (secretly) negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that also would enable customs staff to search computers and all kinds of storage media.

license
these documents are machine generated and so are free of any restrictions regarding use. you can copy, print, publish, remix, turn them into songs, whatever...
at the same time these documents come without any warranty at all. you are responsible for all problems caused by the use of these documents.

interactive electronic sound poetry object

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2008-02-19T10:22:36Z

raoul hausmann's famous letter poem as interactive electronic sound poetry object.

a first experiment in hardware poetry.

made of an attiny2313 (microcontroller), a speakjet text-to-speech-chip, 4 tilt switches, an amplifier kit, a loudspeaker, batteries, switch and a crudely modelled polymer clay enclosure.

my midi controlled cmos synth

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2008-01-31T22:56:24Z

i made a prototype of a cheap diy instrument that can be controlled by ableton live.

it's basically a cheap cmos synth (see the schematics after the jump or better read nicolas collins book) that is controlled by a microcontroller that reads midi data.

but you could also control your favourite circuit bent synth you have at home or any other device that works with low voltages.

the midi kontrollor (that's not a typo, it's german) is pretty simple: just a attiny2313 with an optocoupler for midi and some leds. two of them can be controlled by PWM (that means analog out!) but only one is working with the current software.

the synth consists of three oscillators (schmitt trigger with feedback) and two distortion circuits (one with added fuzz). when you switch on the synth you should hear no sound but sometimes you do (mysterious...). you have to connect the oscillators to the distortion circuits either with your fingers or with wires or (best) with the LDRs that react to the blinking of the LEDs.

the sound is pretty unpredictable but fun and surprising (that's because it's unpredictable (that was the last of these parantheses i promise (this should be a description and not lisp))).

by the way: the enclosure of the synth is made of polymere clay that hardens in the oven.

see schematics and source code for the attiny2313 after the jump...

schematic for the synth & the kontrollor:

schematic.zip

the code for the attiny2313 to control the LEDs:

kontrollor0002.zip

drummer

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2007-12-11T00:08:01Z

4 solenoids controlled by an arduino that reads midi sent by ableton live. this is all very much work in progress, so expect some updates in the next weeks. i'd like to get rid of the arduino and replace it with a cheaper solution like a single micro-controller.

if you'd like to do a similar thing yourself here is the schematic.

disclaimer: please note that i don't take any responsibility for correctness of the circuit. this an experimental prototype only. if you fry your midi interface, laptop or even hurt yourself don't blame me. you were warned. take care.

drummer02.svg

the firmware for the arduino is here (the same disclaimer as above is valid for the code as well):

DrummerFirmware.pde

autodrummer version 2

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2007-11-30T22:59:02Z

i built the second version of my drum robot. i can be controlled with ableton live via a proxy program that converts midi data to serial data that is sent into the arduino controlling the actual robot.

all mechanical stuff is built from fischertechnik. also the gear motor. the electronics consist of an arduino with a self-built motor-controller.

my robot in action...

starting...

nospam@example.com (joerg piringer) — 2007-11-30T22:55:16Z

here i will post all the stuff, that i can not find a place for on my website. expect some personal stuff, work in progress, news, things i find on the web and so on.

topics:
sound poetry, visual poetry, musical robots, my own work etc.