A floating ensemble of 6 buoys around a platform, tied up with ropes made of RGB LEDs and responsive to interaction - pushing, pulling, waves in the water. Each buoy has speakers and accelerometers built in to translate movement into sound, creating a symphony of light, sound, movement, and water.

The installation consists of a floating ensemble of 6 buoys surrounding a central platform. The whole installation is some 12 meters in diameter. The buoys are constructed from car tires and polystyrene, and have bright, waterproof RGB LEDs ropes wrapped around them. The buoys and central platform have speakers built into them. People can swim around and interact with the installation. The buoys respond to both waves and people pushing and tilting them.

Credits

Christian Liljedahl, Sonny Windstrup, Thomas Fabian Eder, Tobi Twang, Nicolas Padfield, Rikke Rasmussen, Brian Vandal, Bent Haugland, Mona Jensen, Alex Bernhard, Eva Kanstrup, Mads Høbye, Jonas Jongejan, Schack Lindemann, Harald me Viuff, Sofus Walbom Kring, Nikolaj Møbius.

Thanks

Thanks to: Smukfest, Sundolitt isolering, Østerbro Tømmerhandel, Jonas ‘Pindhund’ Hallberg, Jakob Thorup

På Dansk

BØLGER
Bølger. Vand. Legende festivalgæster. Menneskets fascination af grænselandet, interfacet mellem land og vand, vand og himmel. Bølger i vandet. Lydbølger i luften. Lysbølger i natten. Bølger i menneskemængden. Vi kan forbinde bølger i forskellige medier. Vi kan give jer mulighed for at lege. Vi kan give jer mulighed for at spille musik sammen mens I svømmer. Med teknologi kan bølger i et medie omdannes til bølger i et andet. Installationen består af 6 bøjer arrangeret rundt om en midterplatform. På platformen kan badegæster sidde, lege og nye koncerten. De 6 bøjer er både instrumenterne og højttalerne i et 6 kanals surround sound system. I hver bøje er der både højttaler, lys og sensorer. Fintfølende nok til at registrere små krusningerne fra et fjernt stankast, robust nok til at badende gæster tumler med dem og slår på dem. Accelerometere måler alt fra krusninger i vandet til badegæster som skubber bøjen rundt. Det hele omdannes til et musikstykke som spilles fra bøjerne. Et interaktivt, kollaborativt musikstykke, hvor gæsterne kan få
afløb for deres kreativitet og tydeligt høre effekterne af deres bevægelser og trommen. Om natten vil lys i bøjerne afspejle vandets bevægelser og spejles smukt i vandet.

Technical description

Each buoy has an arduino which is used for controlling the LED ropes with PWM output using 12 of 14 available channels on the ULN2003 darlington arrays, and for reading LIS302DL accelerometer 3-axis data. The arduinio can talk to a PC based host on shore through balanced RS-422 serial communication. The PC on shore communicates with each of the 6 buoys and transmits commands to the arduinos that sets the colors or behavior of the LED lights. The buoys are connected to the shore setup with cables for power, data, microphone and speaker signals.

The musical performance is controlled by a combination of Ableton Live and MAX. MAX takes two accelerometer channels, filters them and converts them to two MIDI control channels from each buoy which influence the multichannel music generated in Ableton Live. Simultaneously MAX generates themes for the LED ropes to also respond to mood, touch, music, activity.