Category: Process

Trying out with different sizes of coins and also increasing the number of coins in the balloon created varied tones of sound produced by the whizzing. However, I faced a major problem:

The balloons kept bursting after a a few rounds of whizzing. I tried slowing down the speed of the coin or avoiding using the 50 cent coin (because its ridges are quite sharp) so that there would be lesser friction. But despite trying with other coins as I did in my first whizzing experimentation, I still couldn’t rectify the situation. Frustrated and at a loss of how to fix this situation, I decided that I needed to change my concept ASAP. However, still barely attempting to stick to my original concept of a rotary motion with the use of friction to produce sound.

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I remembered an exhibition I went to and a video I watched before that involved the idea of rotary motion to produce music:

“If you can dream a better world you can make a better world or perhaps travel between them”, 2016.

I went for the Singapore Biennale nearing the end of last year, and I came across this amazing work by Melissa Tan. Her works “translates the continually expanding urban physical landscape and terrain of Singapore into abstract visual and sonic contemporary expressions”. According to the Bras Basah Bugis website, her work documents the passing of time “through recording – in sound and sculptural form – the physical features that make up Singapore’s ever-changing landscape”. I was amazed by how she managed to translate sound out of the texture of natural objects. I also like how the irregularity of the holes controlled the sound that was produced. I managed to find a very very short sound recording of the sound:

It was a melodious, pleasant sound that echoed around the quiet space and completely changed the way I viewed these objects . I was reminded of a design article that I saw online, about using natural material to produce sound.

An example is Years by Bartholomaus Traubeck, who translated the sound of tree rings into music by playing them on a turntable. The needle doesn’t scratch the surface like normal record players do, they have sensors that gather information about the wood’s colour and texture and use an algorithm that translates variations into piano notes.

Another example of using natural material to produce sound, but through the use of friction, is this wooden vinyl by Amanda Ghassaei. However, I didn’t like that the sound that it produces are “artificial”, since the grooves are laser cut onto the surface and not natural growth rings from the wood material.

Inspired by this concept, I embarked on a mission to create a “muted”, artificial sound to show the unnaturalness of sound in its most basic form. The first thought that came to mind was white noise, as it is a silent form of sound. In terms of sound, white noise is a noise containing many frequencies with equal intensities. It is also sometimes used in non-technical contexts, in the metaphoric sense of “random talk without meaningful contents”.

However, before I started to create my own “vinyl”, I needed to understand how a vinyl record player works. The original vinyl records require a complex process to produce the music that we hear when we play a vinyl on a record player.

http://blog.discmakers.com/2015/02/how-vinyl-records-work/ 

A vinyl player consists of a stylus, a device that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. It is cone-shaped and typically made from diamond or other gemstone or hard metal. The stylus fits into the grooves of the record, picking up and sending the etched vibrations through cartridge, which converts the information into an electrical signal, sent to an amplifier that boosts the signal’s power, and then to the speakers, which broadcast the sound.  (how am i gonna do this o m g???)

During my research, I managed to find DIY record players that used either real vinyl records or real vinyl players:

The D.I.Y Record Player by Ian Heaney
(http://cargocollective.com/ianheaney/The-D-I-Y-Record-Player)

DIY Wind-Powered Turntable by Bharat
(http://www.damngeeky.com/2016/11/16/45404/diy-wind-powered-turntable-wind-determines-speed-record.html)

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I took inspiration from all these amazing DIY vinyl players and tried to combine both in an attempt to produce sound from it. I started off by creating my own vinyl grooves from scratch. I varied the wavelength and frequency at different intervals of the vinyl so that it would produce different pitches of sound depending on the friction of the needle against the vinyl. I tried out various concentric methods to figure out which one would work well with the needle in guiding it across the surface.

It turns out that none of these worked because they were too far apart or weren’t properly connected to one another, so I reworked my design again:
In the first attempt at laser cutting this design, I decided not to engrave the grooves too deep, and set the lines to be cut as thinly as possible so that the needle wouldn’t derail from it.

However, there was barely any sound produced since the friction was too little and the groove was to thin for the needle to scratch against.

I adjusted and made the line thicker, such that the difference in the sound produced would be more clear when scratched. Here is the laser cutting process of the design above:

I tested out the effectiveness of the spinning with two acrylic pieces, one as the vinyl record, and the other as the base for the vinyl to spin on. I settled on using acrylic as my main material because of its smooth surface. It can spin on its own without an additional spinning mechanism, which might overcomplicate the aesthetic of the model.

I used a pencil as a temporary pole to test the feasibility of the spinning. To see if the sound worked, I used a pin to scratch the surface and realised it produced a static-like sound, with its pitch depending on the frequency of the grooves.

The finalised structure with a supporting stand to hold the needle.

To allow varying tones of static sound produced, I found two other materials that can be used to scratch the acrylic vinyl record – a thin metal pin and a wooden toothpick.

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Metal pin

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Wooden toothpick

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Amplifier

Was playing around with an amplifier because the sound that was produced was barely audible at all and this made it difficult to identify the slight differences in sound of the ridges. I tried using a paper cone to amplify the sound that was produced. It worked only when in contact with the needle, since the vibrations are transferred from the needle to the paper cone.

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The amplifier was redesigned with a wider mouth so that it produces a less concentrated sound. My final model! (Yay, finally)

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There is actually quite a lot I would rectify with this model! The sound produced was not as smooth as I expected it, because the needle does get caught between the ridges of the groove sometimes. I think the stand holding the needle support needs to be loosened such that the needle can easily bounce along the ridges. I am also personally not yet satisfied with the sound because I feel that there could have been more drastic changes between the frequencies of the ridges such that the difference are more distinct when the vinyl is “played”.

Being so used to translating projects visually for the past semester, this project was honestly rather challenging for me because I had problems deciding where to begin from the wide range of possible outcomes. Sound was a topic that was almost completely foreign! I felt that I could have been a lot more experimental with the materials that I used, where I might have discovered something interesting, lots to improve and work on!

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Suggestions for improvement:
– Placing all three needles at the same time to see what sound they produced when the vinyl is spun.
– “Turntable” is not revolving as smoothly as it should because the turning movement of the arm is too great. Need to readjust the fulcrum position & probably add a counterweight on the opposite end so the “pointer” is just floating/ touching the disc but not resting its weight on it.