DandyBerry

Are You Listening?

2008-11-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

Even More Flickr

2008-10-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Dandy 1:31

2008-10-07T12:41:00.001-07:00

More Flickr

2008-10-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

photo by Flickr user arcticlamb

photo by Flickr user Ryan Coleman

photo by Flickr user josephchan749

photo by Flickr user brunorepublic

photo by Flickr user *raffaella

photo by Miles Storey, Torontoist

photo by Flickr user james_hallam

photo by Flickr user Ryan Coleman

photo by Flickr user velnich

photo by Flickr user Ryan Coleman

photo by Flickr user Ryan Coleman

photo by Flickr user Ryan Coleman

photo by Flickr user photo4howi

photo by Flickr user Ryan Coleman

2 Day Loop

2008-10-06T12:51:00.000-07:00

Feedback from Saturday night:

You could speak in different mics, which would come out of the speakers in random different areas. So, you could hide amongst the bubble wrap things, call your friend and they wouldn't know where you were.

The funniest thing was that it records some of the things you say into it, and replays at random times. Long after I'd left, my friend could hear me calling her name in there!

Tribe magazine thread

A stone's throw away is the popular DANDYBERRY, a series of person-sized, bubble-wrapped towers meant to simulate a city. Speakers and microphones inside convey a cacophony of sounds created by the crowd. I'm told the lights will go out if the voices stop, but there seems no danger of that.

The Globe and Mail

FlickrBerry

2008-10-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

DandyBerry was so much fun.

I'll put up some shots of the setup and tear down after I recover from the dandyweek. Until then, here are some amazing photos up on Flickr.

photo by Flickr user chrominance

photo by Flickr user sjgardiner

photo by Flickr user chrominance

photo by Flickr user The Cach

photo by Flickr user viaveg

photo by Flickr user sjgardiner

photo by Flickr user photo4howi

photo by Flickr user inventor_77

photo by Flickr user sscardiac

Thanks to all.

Especially spezbaby

FaceBerry

2008-10-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

True Berrymore

2008-10-02T13:19:00.000-07:00

The internet likes Nuit Blanche:

http://blog.molson.com/community/tag/dandyberry/

http://www.akimbo.biz/exhibitions/?id=12689

http://www.heinekenexperience.ca/nuitblanche/?action=nuitblanche_player_spot_4_624305

We're getting a chance to ensure DandyBerry stands up to the rain. It's doing fine. We still aren't a huge fan of the wetness though.

Solder Berry

2008-10-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

It's the end of the night and I have about enough brain juice to simply list what we did today.
Rod made omelettes.
We started wrapping the box frames in vapour barrier.
We aggressively debated the meaning of life and art.
We got back to vapour barrier-ing, finishing 5 boxes this afternoon.
We then covered 3 boxes in the final bubblewrapping.
Rod and I saw each other through a blurry layer of plastic all day.

The pre-cut and rolled up pieces of bubblewrap graced the living room looking like a little fluffy cloud from DandyLand.

We're currently finishing up some tedious soldering with Mike Lanctot, who showed up and schooled us in soldering techniques. More work tomorrow, and likely more uninteresting prog blog posts!

Dandy Week

2008-09-30T08:19:00.000-07:00

The decrease in posts is mostly due to the sad fact that I lost my digital camera a couple weeks ago. It's a sweet Canon SD1000, if you happened to pick it up off the road at yonge and cumberland.

Moving on. We just got back from Montreal, where the PureData patch was tested successfully (however with a few hiccups). The testing process helped me in my decision to some day soon become a MAC person. The 'brain' of the audio installation just can't be setup on my poor old Toshiba laptop. Thankfully, our arduino wizard and friend Mike Lanctot has offered his Mac laptop for the evening of the event, which by the way, is this Saturday. That's 5 more dandies.

Yesterday we saw the successful completion of the box frames despite Rod's decision to quit drinking coffee. Today was meant to be spent covering most of the boxes in vapour barrier and bubblewrap, but it's a bit wet, and it looks as though it'll be wet until friday. Indoor Berry. Before moving the boxes inside, we couldn't resist taking a few pics, adding to the now extensive repertoire of interim documentation.

Boxes

2008-09-02T19:07:00.000-07:00

DandyBerry is now made up of 3 different sizes of boxes, each corresponding to what's inside them. The original square base hosts the speakers, with a new 18"x30" box type housing the microphones and thirdly, a larger square box with one side open, to allow people to walk inside the bubble-wrapped boxes. The result will diversify the volumes and voids, as well as allow people to experience how fun it is to be inside these boxes, something we discovered very early on.

The following plan will be used as a "working drawing" for the remainder of the planning process:

Light Prototype

2008-09-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Mike is currently working on a second light prototype with 3 different colours of LED that respond to volume and frequency, so a high pitch sound would trigger different lights than a lower pitched sound. We also discussed positioning the 3 different lights in a way that forms an anamorphic pattern, aligning from a particular viewpoint and forming an image of some kind.

Pure Dandy

2008-09-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

Our friend Etienne Noreau-Hebert has been working on the software that will be handling the audio input and output. He's using PureData, a fairly minimalist program that works with lines and boxes which direct the audio. We just love the flowchart-like diagrams that it produces:

We're testing the setup very soon with only the audio equipment. In addition to debugging, we're looking forward to how interesting the bare guts of DandyBerry will look. Picture Janet Cardiff's Forty Part Motet in a room with Phil Spector's Wall of Sound.

Zone C Independent Project

2008-08-14T09:26:00.001-07:00

DandyBerry's project info and promotional image is up and running on the Nuit Blanche Website. DandyBerry is project number 16 at the Dominion Parking Lot, 100 Lynn Williams Street. DandyBerry is suitable for all ages.

More Prototypes

2008-08-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

A big thanks to our friends Calais Cervetti and Mike Lanctot, who have been graciously lending their expertise. Mike is working on a sound-responsive LED fixture driven by an Arduino platform. More on that soon...

Retrospect 2

2008-08-05T15:34:00.001-07:00

Some old preliminary renderings:

Prototype 2

2008-08-03T23:41:00.000-07:00

Assembly: Bubblewrap, Vapour barrier, 2x2 wood frame.
The vapour barrier was added as a stiffening sub-surface for the bubblewrap, and it added a layer of translucency.

Prototype 1

2008-07-31T20:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos of the first prototype. 2x2 lumber frame with the bubblewrap cladding. We're working on the lighting, among a million other things.

Actual Site

2008-06-18T17:00:00.001-07:00

Across the lot from Brian Joseph Davis' Stacked tv's, and down the street from Yoko Ono, right next to the Toy Factory Lofts is DandyBerry's site: the south end of the Dominion Parking lot. We're working on getting some of the overhead lights turned off.

Site Option

2008-06-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

The installation site is tentatively located in a privately owned parking lot between Mowat Avenue and Dufferin Street, just south of Liberty Street, pending approval by the owner of the lot. Aerial image: Google Earth.

ReDandy

2008-06-05T17:41:00.000-07:00

The 2"x2" lumber structure used for the bubble-wrapped boxes will be dismantled after Nuit Blanche and re-used through Habitat for Humanity's ReStore.

They pickup the materials on site and even give you a tax receipt. "ReStore profits pay for 100% of the overhead costs of operating Habitat for Humanity Toronto. By covering our own costs, we are able to direct every dollar donated to our organization to home building."

Audio Wormholes

2008-06-05T14:26:00.000-07:00

Our friend Etienne Noreau-Hebert is working with us on DandyBerry's software component. The 4 audio signals from the microphones will be streamed through a pipeline built with "Pure Data", a program developed by Miller Puckette. Pure Data is a free, open source program similar to "MAX MSP", the commercial version of a program also developed by Puckette. Check out his book The Theory And Technique Of Electronic Music. The audio wormholes let you speak into a mic and hear yourself, a couple seconds later, played from a hidden speaker within the boxes. The general design of the pipeline will consist of a delay/echo effect that produces a layering of recorded events, a cumulative loop, illustrated by this conceptual table:

Participation will allow you to project your voice into the future, repeatedly in 30 minute increments. We are working on spicing up this basic idea, by adding hi-feedback effects to very short slivers of time and letting the feedback ring out, highlighting a random moment in the cumulative loop. There is also an opportunity to play with which mic is associated with which speaker, switching every X minutes.

Retrospect 1

2008-06-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

Some preliminary design studies:

Pitch

2008-05-25T17:17:00.000-07:00

DandyBerry is a cluster of 11 tall boxes that house a participative audio installation. The voids between the boxes produce a stylized urban environment that encourages an exploration of the mics and speakers. Participants can speak into openings in the boxes and hear themselves played back from other boxes. The proposed audio equipment will enable a layering of playback throughout the Nuit Blanche that forms an evolving timepiece, a record of involvement.

Branding efforts from the building industry is depicted as a series of monotonous packages of architecture. The boxes are covered in layers of bubblewrap. They are lit from within, so the cladding forms a protective seal and a light diffuser. Openings in the boxes for microphone input and speaker output are articulated with zones of perforation. The 2”x2” lumber substructure is anchored to the ground to prevent tipping. The arrangement of the boxes is based on an aerial study of Liberty Village. The neighbourhood blocks form two grids at two different angles, echoing off the railway and the waterfront. They collide in Liberty Village and form hybrid blocks and voids. The invitation to participate in close proximity to the boxes generates intimacy within the tight spacing of the cluster.

4 sets of microphones and speakers are hidden within the boxes, challenging participants to identify the pairings. Participants will hear their own voices distorted in playback, mixed with rustling gravel from unexpected corners of the installation. The gradual layering of playback will produce chance combinations of speech and sound. For the flâneur, random juxtapositions in the recordings are as appealing as the spatial accidents of the city. The installation produces a sonic urbanity; it synthesizes the effect of a crowded and vibrant space. The arrangement of the audio equipment resembles a central nervous system, where the computer is the brain. Each audio signal is handled individually by the computer in real-time and sent to the corresponding speakers. The software directs the computer’s resources efficiently while allowing a full customization of the cumulative loop.

Promo photo

2008-05-23T19:02:00.001-07:00

SOI

2008-05-23T18:25:00.000-07:00

This is where I'll post all the documentation of the process of realizing our Nuit Blanche installation.

Rodrido and Danny party.