Input/Output Final Project

Daniela Szeoke. Mine. 2023. Interactive sculpture.

Mine is an interactive sound piece that reconnects items typically found in jewelry cabinets to the natural environment from where their raw materials can be found and extracted. Opening each drawer triggers sounds that were secretly posted online by journalists, visitors, and workers in the Orinoco Mining Arc, an illegal mining site in the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest. Indigenous men, women, and children are being violently forced by government military forces and guerilla gangs to destroy their land in search for gold, silver, diamond, quartz, precious rocks, and coltan. These raw materials are resold in such a manner that they are not easily traced back to the Venezuelan Amazon.

By playing sounds from the mining process and from the government attacks on Indigenous people, this piece confronts viewers with the troubling lineage that our personal objects often have.

Background Info

The items in these drawers are a combination of items sourced from my personal collection as well as collections of friends and family members. While the raw materials used to create these items are from Venezuela, they were extracted prior to the establishment of illegal operations such as the Orinoco Mining Arc in 2017.

System

This piece was created using an Arduino Uno that was using serial communication with Processing on a computer.

//ARDUINO CODE const int BUTTON_COUNT = 6; int buttonPins[BUTTON_COUNT] = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}; // pins for each button bool buttonStates[BUTTON_COUNT] = {false}; // initial states of the buttons void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); for (int i = 0; i < BUTTON_COUNT; i++) { pinMode(buttonPins[i], INPUT_PULLUP); // set each button as input with pull-up resistor } } void loop() { for (int i = 0; i < BUTTON_COUNT; i++) { bool currentState = digitalRead(buttonPins[i]); if (currentState != buttonStates[i]) { // check if button state has changed buttonStates[i] = currentState; // update button state if (currentState == LOW) { Serial.print("Button "); Serial.print(i+1); Serial.println(" pressed"); } else { Serial.print("Button "); Serial.print(i+1); Serial.println(" open"); } delay(50); // debounce delay } } } //PROCESSING CODE import processing.serial.*; import processing.sound.*; Serial myPort; SoundFile[] soundFiles = new SoundFile[6]; // array to hold 6 sound files boolean[] buttonStates = new boolean[6]; // array to hold 6 button states int[] buttonPins = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}; // array of button pins float[] volumes = new float[6]; // array to hold 6 volume levels float maxVolume = 1.0; // max volume void setup() { size(400, 400); smooth(); background(255,150,255); // load sound files for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { soundFiles[i] = new SoundFile(this, "sound" + (i+1) + ".mp3"); volumes[i] = 0.0; // set initial volume to 0 buttonStates[i] = false; // set initial button state to false } println(Serial.list()); // print the list of available serial ports myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[0], 9600); println(myPort); // print the status of the serial port } void draw() { // read serial data if (myPort.available() > 0) { String buttonState = myPort.readStringUntil('\n'); if (buttonState != null) { buttonState = buttonState.trim(); for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if (buttonState.equals("Button " + (i+1) + " open")) { buttonStates[i] = true; } else if (buttonState.equals("Button " + (i+1) + " pressed")) { buttonStates[i] = false; } } } } // adjust volume based on button state for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if (buttonStates[i]) { volumes[i] = maxVolume; } else { volumes[i] = 0.0; } soundFiles[i].amp(volumes[i]); // set volume } // loop sound files for (int i = 0; i < 6; i++) { if (buttonStates[i] && !soundFiles[i].isPlaying()) { soundFiles[i].loop(); } else if (!buttonStates[i] && soundFiles[i].isPlaying()) { soundFiles[i].pause(); } } }

Below is a photo of the circuit used to set up the push button sensors with the Arduino. The push buttons are inside each drawer and they are wired to the breadboard. One end of each button is wired to ground and the other is connected to a pin in the 2-7 range on the breadboard. Everything is concealed inside of the jewelry armoire and is not visible unless you lay on the floor and look up.

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