Gavin Morris has been working on his incredible noise responsive LED sculptures for a while. Technically the sculpture is an fascinating application of WS2812 RGB LEDs, Raspberry Pis as well as a tons of styrofoam cups as well as flower pots. nevertheless the creative development, as well as motivation for this job is similarly interesting. Gavin shares his thoughts as well as a short technical description of the job below.

This year I’ve been artist in home at the Eastville job Space, a new art area in Yeovil, Somerset UK. during the residency I produced The LED Roundsystem, a series of illumination chandeliers. They were influenced by the work of one of the founders of the artspace, Zoe Li whose flowerpot sculpture I saw at “Salvage – A Hacker farm field Trip” a kind, of wonderful secret excursion organised by the band/noise collective which Zoe’s hubby Farmer Glitch was a member at the time. His petrol can synths are definitely outstanding however I was instantly drawn to the flowerpot chandelier as well as wished to put LEDs in it from the moment I saw it.

Much time passed before everything came together. Amazingly for me, Zoe as well as Stephen started a new artspace as well as used me a residency to work on some ideas. Over a few months the LED Roundsystem was born…. The globes respond to volume as well as pitch, illumination up a different colour for every note. They likewise have the ability to record as well as playback online sound.

On the deal with of it it’s just some quite lights however there’s rather a great deal going on behind the scenes.

The globes themselves are made of styrofoam cups. There is a long history of utilizing styrofoam to produce fascinating artwork. normally the cups as well as bowls are stuck together with a combination of solvent complimentary adhesives. I checked out somewhere that you can create cyanide by melting the foam with the wrong glue, so I assumption you have to be a bit careful! I made a hole in each cup utilizing a hollow punch, glued them together as well as then pushed a WS2812 pixel with each one; around 80 pixels in each globe (there are a few somewhat different shapes).

The LED round system in action. The balls colour modifications based on the tones it hears.
Each globe has a Raspberry Pi in it with a wifi dongle as well as a USB soundcard. I am running the Satellite CCRMA image. The picture is based on Raspbian with some optimizations for utilize of audio in addition to adding Pure data as well as Node.js, both of which I utilized for this project. I’ve got mixed feelings about utilizing the Pi for this type of thing, it’s outstanding that it works however it was a somewhat unpleasant advancement process.

A set of Roundsystems at the Eastville job space.
I’ve discovered a great deal of command line Linux stuff. There are rather a few hurdles to get over as well as workarounds needed – however that’s always the method I guess!

The globes have a number of different modes of operation as documented in the video. first of all they are OLA (open illumination architecture) nodes which indicates I can manage them from illumination software application by means of Artnet over WiFi. I’ve been utilizing Jinx! since it has some great patterns as well as a fantastic price. To get the Pi to manage WS2812 pixels I’ve been utilizing Martin Schuhfuss’ Node module which supplies native bindings to the rpi-ws281x library by Jeremy Garff. It’s a bit of a mouthful however it’s been faultless for me so far as well as Martin has motivated me to bring out some extremely minor fixes to get the library to work with my set up.

As I stated the globes are all fitted with USB soundcards as well as have microphones attached. a few of these are set as much as spot ambient noise as well as others a lot more localized noise (e.g. a singer or instrumentalist). A Pure data sketch analyzes the pitch of the incoming audio utilizing Miller Puckette’s outstanding Sigmund~ external, then selects a hardcoded colour for every pitch. It then sends this colour as well as volume data by means of OSC to a Node.js script running on the Pi. There are a number of different illumination patterns offered as well as these are selected randomly or can be set by means of TouchOSC on a phone or tablet. The Node script runs the lights setting the colour as well as intensity according to the incoming data.

Two of the globes likewise have a looper function where audio can be recorded, layered as well as played back with accompanying light patterns. once again there are some parameters which can be set by means of TouchOSC (loop length, comments as well as different thresholds as well as gains) in a performance. additionally general settings can be used for utilize in an installation. It’s a quite fundamental looper however its great fun – you can develop up vocal loops, beatbox rhythms, or play a bit of guitar or melodica. then you can add a lot more loops on one more globe as well as then play over the top into the middle one. It’s rather an fascinating impact as well as feels a bit churchy to me. however can likewise quickly descend into chaotic noise, particularly if a lot of institution youngsters turn up as well as begin playing with them.

I knew that lots of people are likewise timid to make noise in public so I established a tablet interface to manage the globes. Input from a sequencer on the tablets is passed to a server which update all the globes. Beats tapped in by individuals are instantly updated across all linked Roundsystems. There are likewise some one shot buttons where seems can be instantly triggered. These are a bit a lot more easily accessible to people not familiar with the step sequencer format, although people normally suss it out quite swiftly anyway.

Tablets utilized to manage the Roundsystem
So that’s it for the moment. though there’s definitely still potentially for development. I’m thinking about taking them on the road as part of my digital Funfair show. The worry is that Funfair is rather a chaotic atmosphere as well as the globes work finest with a bit of silence as well as darkness. ideally something unforeseen will happen. I welcome your suggestions!