Photosynthesis is an interactive installation for primary school children created, designed and developed by Moritz von Burkersroda and exhibited at P3 Ambika, University of Westminster.

It’s a  learning  experience to understand the abstract process of photosynthesis in a hands-on way.  Thanks to a physical interaction  kids can easily understand what  plants convert light into chemical energy to fuel their activities.

The installation uses an Arduino to measure data from a photoresistor and a hacked Wii-remote to connect the objects with the video feedback on the screen triggered by a Processing sketch. On the page of the project you can download a Design Research Document about Contextual study theory to understand the relationship between interactivity, learning and educational institutions, like museums.

“The color Visualizer” is an immersive installation to understand how color is used in nature to communicate between living organisms and to explore biodiversity through the lens of color:

By plucking an array of multi-colored strings, which are layered over the large array of high resolution screens, visitors can explore over 100 unique color stories as vibrant images and short videos appear before them. Strum a red cord, for example, and learn how a male cardinal bird colors his vibrant red feathers with pigments from food; strum a yellow cord and see how a yellow leopard’s spotted coat allows this predator to blend in with shadow and light while moving through tall grass.

The eye-catching cylindrical installation is part of the permanent exhibition “The color of Life” that opened in June 2015 and was created by Tellart in collaboration with the California Academy of Sciences. It was prototyped using Arduino Uno and it’s currently shortlisted for the Interaction Awards, representing excellence in interaction design.

In the video below the team working at the project explain the main features of the educational installation and show a bit of the making of:

There’s a mineral called pyrite with a interesting nickname, fool’s gold, because it has a superficial resemblance to gold and it’s by far the most frequently mineral mistaken for gold. Even if it’s pretty abundant, there’s a rare form of pyrite which is crystallised in radial shape (as unusual disc spherulites), taking the shape of a disc. The amazing fact is that the only deposit where pyrites of such morphology are found is in Illinois (USA) and the discs are dated around 300 million years ago!

Dmitry Morozov (aka ::vtol::), a media artist living in Moscow, had the chance to use a pyrite disc and created Ra,  a sound object / synthesizer running on Arduino Nano. Ra uses laser for scanning the irregularities of the surface of the disc and further transforms this data to produce sound:

This project originated as a result of an interesting set of circumstances – a pyrite disc was given to me as a gift by a mineral seller in Boulder city (USA). Upon hearing about my works, she asked to do something with such crystal, and refused to take payment for getting it. In the same period, I was reading articles on various ways of archiving and preservation of sounds from the first, historical sources of the recorded sound – wax discs and other fragile carriers. All technologies were based on the usage of lasers. Inspired by these projects, I set out to create a self-made laser sound reader which would be able to produce sound from various uneven surfaces, using minimal resources to achive it. Thus emerged the idea to construct an instrument using the pyrite disc and a self-made laser sound reader.

The production of the object was possible thanks to the commission of the Sound Museum in St.-Petersburg which now has Ra in its collection.

Check the bill of materials and other details on Dmitry’s website. Explore other projects by Dmitry featured on Arduino Blog.

Learn how to pull realtime sensor data from a beehive to monitor its weight, temperature, and humidity over the internet.

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