File:Organum Vivum - a interspecies interface.webm

English: Organum Vivum is an interspecies interface advantaging the characteristics of organic material as well as exploring the possibilities of combining natural and build organisms in sound synthesis. Bacterial cellulose items, working as sensors, are translating our direct interaction with them into a soundscape controllable with touch and breath. In order to communicate in human level through the instrument we’ll have to be aware of the behaviour of a natural material and it’s, sometimes unpredictable, responses to our actions. The result is a sonification of direct interspecies interaction between a human and a micro-organism.

Presented at: 01.02.2015 / Final Presetation of the CTM HACKLAB resaults together with Aliisa Talja @Hau1 11.02.2015 / Organum Vivum / 3DMin @ Leap Berlin 11-14.06.2015 / Presentation of experimental bio-interface as generative instrument Organum Vivum / DesignTransfer @ DMY For detailed documentation see : plsdlr.net/?/Works/OrganumVivum/ Technical Details: We started by prototyping a small circuit to measure the resistance of four pieces of bacterial cellulose. The circuit has 5.1 k resistors as reference resistance and the analog input pins of the arduino as the input device. The values of the resistors were determined by purely experimenting, while having the openFrameworks application, PulsumOSC by Leslie Garcia, running. This way we were able to get some permanent values. The design of the circuit also made it necessary to implement four diodes. Software wise, the final setup consists of an arduino script, that is reading constant values from the analog input pins and then sending them via serial to the openFrameworks application which finally transforms the values in OSC messages and sends them to supercollider. The Supercollider patch consists of three Influx’s which control three Ndef’s and some OSCresponderNodes. The first version of the hardware thus consisted of an arduino, a soldered circuit on a prototyping board and crocodile clamps for embedding the organic material.

For the final prototype we replaced the crocodile clamps with glueing the wires onto the bacterial cellulose with pieces of the material itself. This way we were able to attain both a better usability and the simple aesthetics we wanted. The form of the user interface was to large extent dictated by the functionality of the pieces and easily formable rapid prototyping materials available. In the end we created three different pieces; a mask made out of EVA foam, a touch pad with a base made out of acrylic glass and a foldable piece with poly- propylene holder.