I play with digital circuitry: building PC boards, connecting wires, and solving new problems.
SoundBlocks is a tangible environment where youth connect blocks to describe network dataflow. The environment explores digital sound manipulation as a personal, meaningful and fun artistic endeavor, rather than as a venture into mathematical, electronic or networking relationships.
Around 2004 I developed a few protoype microphones enhanced to also offer proximity detection. The microphone could adjust it’s amplitude and bass response based on the proximity of the person using it. This would lessen the variable results users experience when holding a microphone too close or too far. Moreover, with proximity or its derivative mapped to a combination…
I worked with a team of colleagues, community members, and urban youth. Our intention was to help the youth learn in a playful environment, find personal self-expression, and have their voices heard by communities in Boston. To do this, we adapted commercially available technology to provide a unique medium: digital puppetry.
I built a connector to access the Gameboy circuitry using a solderless breadboard and used it to interface flash memory and a Digital to Analog Convertor (DAC) to the Gameboy.