A couple of years back I made the WAMI which is a simple digital wave modulation instrument, which really means that it can make a bunch of cool sounds by waving your hands over it. Last month I saw a blog post on it on MAKE zine. The WAMI Dome was a project commissioned by my friend Jim Heekin Jr. for his leisurely use =)
Jonah Brucker-Cohen Wrote a brief description of it on the Make Zine Blog.
Thanks for the shout out! =)
Wami Dome from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
Its only a couple of weeks away and the Pianocktail is NOT working yet.
Nevertheless it will work in time for the show. There is no negotiating =)
The Pianocktail has two scheduled shows;
1. Exit Art
475 10th Ave @ 36th ST
New York, NY
Time and Date:
Monday, December 15, 2008
8:00pm - 11:00pm
2. ITP Winter Show
721 Broadway 4th Fl.
New York, NY
Time:
Wednesday, Dec. 17th 2008.
Thursday, Dec. 18th 2008.
5pm-9pm
We are making good progress in the Pianocktail. There are 2 more weeks left in the semester and about a month left to do in work. Thankfully we have around 10 or 20 coffee shops around NYU. Can’t wait to take the first sip out of a cocktail mixed by the Pianocktail.
While I write the code, Florica is wiring the circuit together.
As you may see in the pictures there are a bunch of wires that we have to deal with. For every input switch there is a wire and for every output switch there will be 4 wires. There will be 88 input signals and 48 output signals coming and going from the Arduino. This means we have to connect over 280 wires!
What all this means is that we have a lot of wiring to do! Lucky Florica is on it. Oh and did I mention we are re-painting the piano and still need to add the liquid dispensing mechanism?
The WAMI Dome got some exposure at the Electronic Social Club’s Annual Exhibit at Hunter College. Everyone really enjoyed to play with the little dome and its square wave sounds.
This is a video of the dome in action:
The Jimmy (WAMI Dome) at ESC Exhibit. from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
We have begun to make modifications on the Piano to allow for the drink mixing mechanism to be installed. We made a bunch of holes on the wood cover flap to use as a bottle holders.
Florica was so exited about starting to add the switches to the keys that she took off all the keys with out mapping where all the keys belonged. Luckly we realized that the keys are numbered in order and eventually we untangled the mess, literary! =)
Mental note: Wires tangle up really easily.
Once we added the metal pieces, that will serve as a switch to the keys, we began the tedious process of putting the keys back on to the piano. Patience played a big part during this assignment.
Finally all keys where in place and we tested out the switches to see if they where working properly.
Surprisingly, they are not working as smoothly as we expected, but its not a big set back since we can adjust the switched to work better.
The most exiting thing about the circuit is that it works!
Now if those solenoid valves and relays get here eventually, we can get started on the liquid dispensing mechanism.
We are making some good progress on the circuit for the Pianocktail. It may all look like a bunch of components thrown together (which they are) but they are working in semi-harmony.
This is an image of the circuit:
I got stuck trying to make the 11 shift registers work, it seems that I was loosing the signal of switches after the fifth shift register.
The solution to the problem was to set up groups of 5 shift registers going into the Arduion via Serial, Clock and Latch. This is not the best case scenario, since I am using 3 more pins of my Arduino, but its a quick fix to the problem. I was told to use a 1µf capacitor to boost the signal, but I have not tried that yet.
This is a video of the circuit set up:
Pianocktail Circuit - Inprogress from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
Its done!
Jim’s WAMI dome is ready to be showed and played!
check it out:
Jim’s WAMI Dome from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.
How do you know what key a person pressed on a piano, and then translate that information on to making a cocktail? Our approach to the first part of that question is making a circuit that has 88 input switches to detect every single key in the piano. This is what the circuit is looking like so far. You can see 11 shift registers(shift-in) in a parallel set up to detect the keys and 6 shift registers (shift-out) to trigger the liquid to flow. I am having trouble with the signal past the 5th shift register. I have yet to figure out if its a voltage issue or a software issue.
I’ll keep you posted.
If Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata was a cocktail,
what would it taste like?
Oscar Peterson’s “Tenderly”?
Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Great Balls Of Fire”?
The painocktail exists in a world of contradictions and exceptions where music and liquor are in harmony with mood and nothing is as it seems. It conveys a capricious indulgence and a merging of luxuries. It has no purpose but pleasure, mystery and defamiliarization. It embraces the imaginative strangeness and beauty that resides beneath the surface of ordinary life.
The pianococktail is a piano that mixes drinks based on the combination of keys played. Each key combination corresponds to a different spirit, liquor, juice and garnishes that are mixed to make cocktails that are appropriate to the mood of the song played. The concept that music can be drank in addition to being heard is not anything new. The Pianocktail was conceived in the middle of WWII by the writer Boris Vian. What better time than now, in the middle of an economic windfall, to propose to bring to life the imagined object of the pianocktial and indulge in a merging of luxuries?
Boris Vian in his novel “Lecume des Jours” (Froth on the Daydream) 1947 describes such a piano. But Boris only dreamed about the piano since the technical requirements to build it, where very obscure and very complex at the time. Its only till recently that technology has become available in a way that anyone can build such a machine, with the right tools and a little patience.
In 2006, G’raldine Schenkel created her version of the Pianocktail. Although very entertaining, it is missing the complexity needed to allow a user to create any drink the imagination may manage to conceive.
Florica Vlad and I decided to create an instrument that can mix liquids in a manner that will inspire expression in new unintended ways. The Pianocktail will be the product of Florica’s Thesis and my New Interfaces for Musical Expression or N.I.M.E. project.
The exiting part about this project being in N.I.M.E. is that I will be performing in front of a large audience at a public venue such as Exit Art which was the site for last year’s N.I.M.E. performance.
I can almost picture it now, a line of people waiting their turn to show their piano skills and get a mixed drink that is unique to the melody they played. What amazing and not so great drinks will be created!
