The piece consists of three analog projectors, a sculptural housing, and an LED video animation. The opening reception was on January 12th, 2012, and featured modern dancer Yuka Takahashi.

We took the opportunity to introduce a work of interactivity to a public space in Boston, exploring themes of play and creativity, while unifying the work with the goals of the Greenway and the Boston Harbor Islands.

Photos by Matthew Shanley.

Support for the materials for the work was provided by the Rose Kennedy Greenway. The Harbor Islands graciously provided the pavilion and the LED screens, which were integrated with the assistance of Boston Cyberarts and the Pavilion.

The work shows from January 2012 to mid March 2012, and is a block from the Aquarium T stop.

See associated posts with Lighthouse, including coverage by the Boston Dig, and a press release.

Here are a few tracks and sketches for an album entitled ‘everything incredible’.

I wanted to create generative music that could be encoded in a function, and had to be played with a physical piece of hardware, rather than digital reading. Here I use the Arduino with a piezo. I write a function to generate a string of numbers, which determines the oscillation of the piezo. You can also play with the PWM of the sound.

Example tracks:

int prettyCool(int t){
 return abs(16-(t^2)|(t%5)&t^2)%16;
}

int slowIncrease(int t){
 int out =((5 + t%3)+ (t>>5) % 42) * (t%2);
 if(out==0){out=((t>>5)+1%42);}
 return out;
}

int triangle(int t){
  int out = (t<<1) %16;
  return out;
}

int coolDoubleTriangles(int t){
  int out = abs(16-((t/2)<<1)%16)*(t%2);
  out+= (((t/2)<<1)%16)*((t+1)%2);
  return out;
}

 

I was inspired by this blog post discussing short c++ scripts to generate complex sounds, but i did not have /dev/audio on my mac, so I built the simple Arduino circuit.

The whole album is also completely open source.  You can see how all of the sounds were generated, and tweak, or remix as you wish.  The code is available here:  github.com/​whichlight/​everything-incredible, and I ask to be referenced/credited should you choose to use the work.  Over time, you will see updates to the code, as the album develops.

Although I want the music to be heard with the piezo, I recorded a few pieces and posted clips on vimeo.

How to play this album

This is an image from Arduino PlayMelody. The setup is the same.

1.  Install the Arduino environment, and get your Arduino.

2.  Find a piezo.  Plug the red wire into pin 9 and the black into ground.

3. Download the script.

4. Plug your Arduino in and upload the script.

5. You will see a bunch of functions below loop() in the script.  These correspond to different pieces.  There are several ways to load them.  In the loop() you can assign ‘pitch’ to the output of any of those functions.  I added two more variables: the pulse width, and note duration.  Those can be commented out, or changed as well.

Note that as the album develops this structure may change.  In the final phase, there will be a button added to toggle between tracks.

Rapid Prototyping, Creativity, and Open Hardware Workshop from which light on Vimeo.

I led a workshop exploring ideas of rapid prototyping and physical ideation with the Arduino platform, using the Experimenter kits. This was at a festival+conference of entrepreneurship at MIT.

The workshop began with a short presentation.  You can find the images corresponding to the ideas here. This framed the workshop by showing participants some of the implications of the technology they were learning.

The open hardware model has gained in popularity just recently, in the last few years, propelled in part by the rise of the Arduino, but also events like the Open Hardware Summit. People are expressing new ways to do business, and engage with customers, using open hardware.

WIRED came out with an article called ‘The Next Industrial Revolution‘ outlining the simple idea of ‘giving away the bits, and selling the atoms’- meaning that you give away the information, but sell the actual thing. Giving away the information can be amenable to building a community and ecosystem of add-ons around your product.

For the Arduino this led to the development of Arduino clones, as well as tons of shields to do different things, like handle TV input, or Ethernet connections. The Arduino itself can be best introduced by seeing a gallery of projects people have completed with it- you get an idea of its unexpected potential.

Finally I outlined a few tutorials to go through, and we went over the basics. Those are also posted on the workshop page. What actually happened was that after the initial description of parts, people jumped in immediately. Instead of commanding the group at once, I went around and answered questions individually or with smaller groups.

I encouraged the question “What would you do with this?”, which was inspired by Giovanni’s workshops in Burkina Faso. He would give a tutorial of how to work with a web tool, like Flickr or Google Maps, then there would be a experimentation/play session framed by that question.  This would create a local community incubator- all sorts of ideas came out- some with business potential.  This made me think of D-Lab and creative capacity building.  Then it occurred to me, perhaps this question could refocus the workshop not on what I could teach others, but on awakening/strengthening their creative potential.  That’s exciting.

For this workshop the learning and experimentation merged. Several cool projects came about, taking ideas of the first tutorials and changing them in ways to produce something original, and meaningful for the participant. People were very gracious and excited to have completed these initial steps- a whole new set of possibilities emerged in their mind- of introducing sensors in the world, and programming physical interactions.

text+icons is a way to play with the icons of the Noun Project. You can type a message, and any words that match icons will be displayed as the icon. So you get a message thats a mix of text and icons.

I find the Noun Project pretty exciting – an intuitive visual language that can span many spoken languages. I like the idea of developing tools that will use the language, and can in turn potentially help the language grow. text+icons is exploring that idea.

The URL updates to reflect your message. You can write a little icon poem and send the URL to friends and they can see your text+icon creation when they open it in their browser. Here is one by james that I like:

my coffee addicted surfing robot sloth drives a jeep and loves physical-therapy and golf

and the accompanying URL: http://texticons.whichlight.com/#my&coffee&addicted&surfing&robot&sloth&drives&a&jeep&and&loves&physical-therapy&and&golf&

Shortened: http://bit.ly/oNEiB4

You can share the message via twitter too, using the share buttons below the input box. The URL is automatically shortened using bit.ly.

To make this, I used bottle to retrieve the icons and javascript to visualize it all. Bottle is running using Passenger. You can see the source and remix the project here.  There is also a pretty simple API to the noun project icons that I wrote.  At the time this was made, I could not find one, but there will probably be one presented in the coming months by the Noun Project.

You can get an icon of a particular noun as an img or a json.

For the json:
just search the [noun] with http://texticons.whichlight.com/api/[noun], and you’ll get back a json with {‘status’ : ‘ … ‘, ‘data’ : ‘…’} where status will be ‘Success’ if there is an icon, and ‘Fail’ if there is not. ‘data’ will return back the icon link if there is an icon. It just retrieves the first icon if there are multiple ones.

For the img:
just search the [noun] with http://texticons.whichlight.com/icon/[noun] and you’ll get an img.

COOL!

First Prototype

In Touch Optics, I am collaborating with Ian Wojtowicz to produce open source tools to convert visual information to tactile information.   We hope to create simple and inexpensive devices to extend our abilities to explore and understand our environment.  We will create clothes that can see.

Implications of this include devices to aid the visually impaired. This is the first time I have designed technology for accessibility.  Inherent in designing for someone else is the need to maintain a conversation with who you are designing for.  I  am continually conscious of the ‘I can help you’ thinking which can imply a false asymmetry and plague many design projects and development intentions.

I am excited of the potential to create an accessible technology which can potentially benefit everyone in some way.  Like the example of sidewalk ramps, they are essential or wheelchair accessibility, but they are a beautiful design decision which positively affects everyone.

The group is participating the MIT Global Challenge.

Here is the website for the project.

Technology is increasingly shaped and developed by everyday people who design, build, and hack their own devices, and the goal of this class is to understand, contribute to, and support these creative communities. We will focus on tools that enable non-experts to design and build computational and electronic artifacts. Along the way we will investigate software toolkits, hardware toolkits, open-source technologies, fabrication processes, and new manufacturing and distribution models.

from Design for Empowerment

With crowd-sourcing, social media, and open source tools we are all becoming a part of collaborative and community based social technology projects.  We will explore these communities and tools with the question: How can we create tools which foster healthy communities? How can you identify and describe a healthy community?

DFE:X is an extension of the Design for Empowerment class offered at the MIT Media Lab that is open to anyone.  We will share course materials, discussion points, documents, guest lectures, etc with the MIT course, but will meet and discuss on our own.

Over the duration of the course, participants will work to develop a design idea of their own with a critical eye toward the material explored in the course and will employ resources around the Boston area to realize the physical or digital prototypes (e.g. Boston FabLab, sprout, MIT Media Lab, etc.).

Here is the website for the course.

[from musica elettronica viva]

We are making the first steps now toward an actively revolutionary music, a music which will not be an instrument of ruling-class “culture”… but rather a force in the hands of the people, a special language belonging to everybody. When this happens, the “concert” will come to resemble other liberated forms such as the party or the day off.

WHIRL is a multimedia event to quench our desire for beautiful works of art in any medium and ecstatic electronic experiences produced by local artists.  Its something we can do together.  Contactwhichlight(take this out) at gmail(and this) dot com if you have any questions or would like to help out. thanks <3!

Past WHIRLing
at FIGMENT June 4-5, 2011

Collaboration with Dorkbot Boston

6-9 pm Tuesday, May 17th 2011, at Middlesex Lounge in Central Square, FREE

April 22nd at the Lilypad in Inman Square.

Tentative artists and performers:

INTERACTIVE ART by Russell McClellan, Ben Lacker, Eric Rosenbaum, Jay Silver, Paul Feitzinger, Michael Dewberry, Will Whelan

LIVE ELECTRO PERFORMANCES by PC//MM, Ming Ming

PL: Rut Roh

DJs: Sleepyhead, Pajaritos

Performances by Pancake, Crista Galli, and plastic color// math magic on Saturday, September the 11th at the   Lilypad in Inman Square after the art installation and opening by Bill Imbrogna.

A live set from the evening
Latest tracks by Crista Galli

Performance and DJing by PC//MM, with many others joining in later in the evening.  Projections from a variety of sources including deep sea documentaries and science-y crystal flowing stuff.

plastic color//math magic is Joey Asal and Kawandeep Virdee

plastic color // math magic WHIRL demo by plasticcolormathmagic

Listen here if the above player doesn’t work

This piece was created for the 2010 Linux Audio Conference composition competition. The theme is 150 years of recording sound, to mark the anniversary of the oldest reproduced sound fragment “Au Claire de la Lune” dated from 1860:

The original 150-year old “Au Claire de la Lune” sample, found at www.firstsounds.org/sounds/scott.php can be used as a starting point… For the composition process the use of Linux and/or open source applications is strongly encouraged and appreciated.

The composition must be accompanied by a (short) description of the work and the use of software technology.

In Moment of Clarity, I sample the 150 year old recording and create a composition based on the narrative of experimentation, exploration and discovery.

Initially hearing the sample I thought to remove the noise, at which point I realized that the noise is an essential aspect of the recording, giving it history and character.  In the piece I explore reframing the noise of the sample, i.e. as a percussive sound, or a texture.

The manipulations of the sample were written in Super Collider, and the mixing was done in Audacity.  Both pieces of software are available for free download and are open source. I thought about what compositional tools were available with the open source software that would be much more difficult to achieve, with as much freedom, in commercial software.  I found this an exciting opportunity to explore open source music apps, and push myself to learn something new.

I followed a similar stereo sound particle theme that I explored with virtual hardware in emergence_voice and live analog synths the guests/ a vision/ to this river .  In this case I was able to execute the randomness and repetition of the particles through code, rather than twisting knobs live through software or hardware.  This allowed me to slice up the sample and collage it on a larger scale, and immediately feel what differences slight parameter shifts made.

The 2010 Linux Audio Conference will be held in Utrecht from May 1st through 4th.

update: Moment of Clarity was awarded first prize in the Linux Audio Conference composition competition.  The following is an except from what the jury from FirstSounds.org (who provided the audio sample) had to say

“I’m impressed with the distinctively percussive use the composition by Kawandeep Virdee makes of the source material. It is quite effective, and very different from the strategies found in other creative works I’ve heard using phonautogram samples, so it rates highly in terms of originality. Despite the thorough transformation of the sample, it still retains enough of its original timbral character — the “noisiness” — for the source to be recognizable and meaningful.”

Soup night can occur wherever there is a willing host, preferably spreading to new parts of the city. Participants can bring friends or food if they wish.  We find a theme, based on relevant news or pop culture, or whatever and make the soup based on that.

Friends tell their buddies about it, and we see familiar faces from one soup night to another.  Between soup nights I actively seek people from disciplines, or with different hobbies, which haven’t been represented in previous soup nights to add to the mix of people, and see what sorts of conversation and ideas bubble up.  The meaning and enjoyment people can feel collectively is greater than I can provide alone, so instead I create an environment to cultivate that collective joy.  How can we design a space where you can go and have great conversations and meaningful connections?  This is relational art to grow a community.

‘soup night boston’ is inspired by the great soup nights I went to in Portland, hosted by PDX Soup Night. It began in March 2010.

The electronic composition was created in 2008 for an assignment to create a piece in response to “Come Out” by Steve Reich.  I used an ARP 2600 and a vocal recording.  I was initially inspired by a passage in the book Shantaram that described so perfectly a moment during an argument between lovers.  It is a phase transition that occurs when one lover speaks words that convey exhaustion and defeat but not caring, and the other lover shifts from anger to an apologetic sadness.  I was thinking of those words,  and more importantly how they are spoken.

The film piece was created after.  In choosing the visuals I imagined forms which give a sense of movement and energy, yet are contained.  For me, those are the forms which many of the sounds in this piece evoked. I used old documentary footage from the Prelinger Archives.

imm la ti on: argue/eusocial from Kawandeep Virdee on Vimeo.

The electronic composition was featured in the GW Hatchet, and the video piece was featured in the GW Art Gala on March 28th 2008 in the E-Street City View Room.