Art installations are an interesting business, which more and more often tend to include electronic or mechanical aspects to their creation. Compared to more mainstream engineering, things in this space are often done quite a bit differently. [Jan Enning-Kleinejan] worked on an installation called Prendre la parole, and shared the lessons learned from the experience.

The installation consisted of a series of individual statues, each with an LED light fitted. Additionally, each statue was fitted with a module that was to play a sound when it detected visitors in proximity. Initial designs used mains power, however for this particular install battery power would be required.

Arduinos, USB power banks and ultrasonic rangefinders were all thrown into the mix to get the job done. DFplayer modules were used to run sound, and Grove System parts were used to enable everything to be hooked up quickly and easily. While this would be a strange choice for a production design, it is common for art projects to lean heavily on rapid prototyping tools. They enable inexperienced users to quickly and effectively whip up a project that works well and at low cost.

[Jan] does a great job of explaining some of the pitfalls faced in the project, as well as reporting that the installation functioned near-flawlessly for 6 months, running 8 hours a day. We love to see a good art piece around these parts, and we’ve likely got something to your tastes – whether you’re into harmonicas, fungus, or Markov chains.

When asking the question “Do humans dream of machines?”, it’s natural to think of the feverish excitement ahead of an iPhone or Playstation launch, followed by lines around the block of enthusiastic campers, eager to get their hands on the latest hardware as soon as is humanly possible. However, it’s also the title of an art piece by [Jonghong Park], and is deserving of further contemplation. (Video after the break.)

The art piece consists of a series of eight tiny harmonicas, which are in turn, played by eight fans, which appear to have been cribbed from a low-power graphics card design. Each harmonica in turn has a microphone fitted, which, when it picks up a loud enough signal, causes an Arduino Nano to actuate a mechanical finger which slows the fan down until the noise stops. It’s the mechanical equivalent of a stern look from a parent to a noisy child. Then, the cycle begins again.

The build is very much of the type we see in the art world – put together as simply as possible, with eight Arduinos running the eight harmonicas, whereas an engineering approach may focus more on efficiency and cost. Between the squeaks from the toy harmonicas and the noise from the servos entrusted to quiet them, the machine makes quite the mechanical racket. [Jonghong] indicates that the piece speaks to the interaction of machine (robot harmonica) and humanity (the finger which quells the noise).

It’s a tidily executed build which would be at home in any modern art gallery. It recalls memories of another such installation, which combines fans and lasers into a musical machine.

[dmitry] writes in to let us know about a new project that combines lasers with fans and turns the resulting modulation of the light beams into an autonomous soundscape. The piece is called “divider” and is a large, wall-mounted set of rails upon which seven red lasers are mounted on one end with seven matching light sensors mounted on the other end. Interrupting the lasers’ paths are forty-two brushless fans. Four Arduino Megas control the unit.

Laser beams shining into light sensors don’t do much of anything on their own, but when spinning fan blades interrupt each laser beam it modulates the solid beams and turns the readings of the sensors on the far end into a changing electrical signal which can be played as sound. Light being modulated by fan blades to create sound is the operating principle behind a Fan Synth, which we’ve discussed before as being a kind of siren (or you can go direct to that article’s fan synth demo video to hear what kind of sounds are possible from such a system.)

This project takes this entire concept of a fan synth further by not only increasing the number of lasers and fans, but by tying it all together into an autonomous system. The lasers are interrupted repeatedly and constantly, but never simultaneously. Listen to and watch it in action in the video below.

There isn’t a lot of in-depth technical information on the project page, but there are many really good photos. We especially love the way that the whole assembly is highly visual with the lasers turning on and off and interacting with different fans.

Any changing electrical signal can be played as sound, and if there’s one thing projects like self-playing musical hardware can teach us, it’s that if you have an electrical signal that looks strange or chaotic, hook a speaker up to it because it probably sounds pretty cool!

It's just an egg, placed in a vulnerable position. "I thought it would be fun to pit a large metal machine against a small fragile object," says Mendoza.

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