Project 5: Penultimate

After a lot of thought and discussion with the group we have decided on keeping the original water and switch idea, but now have simplified it to only one long plastic tube that will allow easy access for the water to move in. Since this has created an easier construction it means we can build it on the staircase without it becoming time consuming to make and distracting from the actual sound. This is also cost effective and will not require anything else other than wire and tape. A big concern was how long the voltage would be able to last in such long wire and was one of the first tests we did before proceeding, our longest wire should not be any longer than 15 meters which is well under the 50 meter wire test we trialed.

Around 30 meters of plastic tubing

From further discussion we later thought that having only one tube would hold its own problems of how much creativity and variation there would be from the sounds. Fortunately from the amount of tube we had we could go down 3 flights of stairs with two tubes, allowing us to have the interaction of when and which tube the water was to go down. From this we will have one main sound that is altered by the switches to become electronic in one tube and samples of electronic noises produced from our surroundings in the other. There was some concern of if the Ableton Live program could handle multiple keys being pressed or held down or if it would freeze up. We tested on the laptop keyboard and did not find any problems as of yet but could be something we faced after setting up.

One of the tests we did to confirm how long the water would run for

 For our samples I was able to go use the Zoom and record everyday sounds around my apartment. I recorded both water and electrical noises incase we wanted to mix it up with what we played. Here is one of the electrical samples.

Our rolls of wire that are the length of each switch, will end up having four times this amount