Moog Hackathon

Moog Bed

A project for the 2021 Moog Hackathon created along with Jack Thomson and Krish Ravindranath. We continued our trend of sonifying things thats shouldn't be sonified using the Moog Werkstatt, this year creating a bed of nails and using it as a synthesizer controller. We discovered that the current generated by the human body is enough to activte the gate of an NPN transistor, which could then be used to control parts of a synthesizer. We connected regions of the bed using copper tape, and wired up a transistor to each of these. We replaced the Werkstatt's built-in keyboard with a keyboard corresponding to a foot-played keyboard towards the bottom of the bed of nails. Additionally, near the arms are a series of CV-generating regions patched into the CV inputs of the Werkstatt. By increasing the surface area of your body touching a region of the bed, the NPN transistor is opened more and more, creating a variable voltage when the current is sunk through the correct resistor.

Noise Blender

This was a project for the 2020 Moog Hackathon along with Jack Thomson and Krish Ravindranath. This year we set out to create an interface with the Werkstatt that could be controlled by a human performer but would also feed back into itself. To do this we created the Noise Blender, a smoothie-making machine controlled by the signals of the Werkstatt. We custom-built a DIY blender thats speed would be controlled by the frequency of the main oscillator of the synthesizer and well as three ingredient-dispensing mechanisms that were controlled by the synthesizer’s LFO and actuated by different notes being played on the keyboard. The idea was that the user could set out to make a specific smoothie and in the process create a unique sonic landscape or alternatively set out to make specific sounds and end up with a unique smoothie. Additionally a contact mic was attached to the blender and fed back through the synthesizer’s audio stream causing the physical sounds of the device itself to be mixed into the audio output, eliminating the need for any external mics if it were to be recorded. My contributions to this project were the design and fabrication of all of the electronics as well as sound design. This project received the "Best Performance" award.

C.A.R.S. (Car Auditory Response System)

A project for the 2019 Moog Hackathon created along with Jack Thomson and Krish Ravindranath. The goal was to sonify the action of driving a car. To do this we hooked into the On Board Diagnostic Computer of a car. We retrieved signals provided by the sensors built into the car such as fuel trim readings, engine rpm, speed of the car and more. These signals were then processed and outputted by a RaspberryPi to be used as control signals on a Moog Werkstatt, a simple analog synthesizer. My contributions to this project were writing code to process the signals, creating the hardware interface between the RaspberryPi and the synthesizer as well as the sound design. This project was awarded second place overall at the hackathon.