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- ARDUINO PRACTICE -

work in progress...

PROJECT INSPIRATION:

I was originally inspired by @modernbiology on Tiktok. He creates music with plants using an Instruo Scion and a Eurorack setup. My options were slightly limited as buying a Scion and a basic Eurorack setup would cost min £600. So, I decided to challenge myself further by trying to create my own version of the Instruo Scion. I will do this by building an Arduino/Elegoo single board computer. I also want to create a live installation of my final piece. I will also make this performance available through my website or set up an in-person installation.

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The idea of composing using plant signals can be traced back to work such as John Cage's song 'Branches' [1976] when he used seed pods from a poinciana tree to create percussive sounds. Bio-synthesis is still an emerging field. Other composers and people experimenting in the field include Mileece, Felbify and Invisible Flock.

PROJECT PLANNING:

To gain some confidence in using an Arduino I initially started off by following basic beginner circuit schematics by ELEGOO. (ELEGOO is the brand name of the Arduino I'm using). The first tutorial was the most basic circuit, powering a red LED.

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Then I moved on to slightly more complicated LED circuits, I connected an RGB LED and ran the provided code to make it cycle through all the different colours. After this, I created a circuit which cycled through eight LEDs 

This ended up more complicated then it needed to be, I could have connected the LED straight to the breadboard, instead I used extended jumper wires to connect it. 

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RGB LIGHT CYCLE

After I had gained some confidence in building these circuits, I moved on to powering and displaying text on an LCD display. This circuit allowed me to change the code to whatever I wanted to display on the LCD. Also, I could change the screen brightness using a potentiometer.

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RGB LED

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Full code download:

This project is continuing on with my interest in experimental music that developed last year. I composed a track that "wrote itself" by using a plugin called Stochas. You can listen to this work on my Showreel.

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