The Simplest Lesson of All....

Today, I learned something very important in class - and it's something my teachers have been telling me since I was a little girl:

SAVE OFTEN SILLY.

So much for my Inkscape jail house illustration >:O

The Banting House: London's Hidden Gem

Ahhh, reading week... What's a grad student to do for a whole seven days to entertain her 16 year old brother? Drag him to local museums in search of an internship? Sounds like a good plan to me!

Today, my brother and I braved the bitter Canadian cold to venture across London and check out the birthplace of insulin. It seemed like an important place to see while I'm here, and as a National Historic Site, why not see if there was some work for me there?

Admittedly, the Banting House was not something I knew about before I moved to London - and even worse, the discovery of insulin was not something I've recognized as a Canadian triumph. But then again, why would I? I feel so very cheated sometimes with the version of history I've been brought up on in the American high school... I suppose that's why I'm here.

Tucked away on the not-so-scenic corner of Adelaide and Queen, stands a modest home with a extensive courtyard that distinguishes the Banting House from the rest of the buildings on the street. In particular, the Flame of Hope that burns next to the property is not only eye-catching, but captivating (not to mention, it commemorates the visit of the Queen to the site). One can't help but wonder - what is the story here?

And quite a story it is! The museum is a prime example of a pilgrimage destination that can really have a life-long effect on visitors. The museum director mentioned that there are three types of people who typically come into the museum: the cultural tourist, the academic/scientific researcher, and the people whose lives have been affected by diabetes. Even though each visitor is there for a different reason, they all seem to mention a particular aura, especially in the bedroom of Banting's house, where he awoke in the middle of the night to scrawl out his idea to fight diabetes. It can be quite an emotional experience. Even my brother (who isn't a fan of museums, school, or learning in general) said that this was the only museum he's ever been to that's managed to hold his interest.

The museum not only interprets the discovery of insulin and the fascinating life of Frederick Banting, but serves as a symbol for the on-going struggle against diabetes, people living with (and not dying from) the disease, and the hope that something better than insulin will soon be discovered.

With a mission like that, who wouldn't want to be a part of this museum?! If you haven't visited this site yet, I would highly recommend it - I tried not to give too much away here. The place is full of surprises and WOW-factor. Perhaps if you wander in during the summer months, I shall be enthusiastic intern who greets you at the door (which is quite stubborn to open and close, might I observe)!

ARDUINO...and Other Exciting Digital Ventures!

I must admit, I did not see myself taking an interest in using the Arduino for my Interactive Exhibit Design project (despite its Italian charm). It's occurred to me now that this was because I didn't really understand the magnitude of what it could do and I couldn't see it fitting into my expedition through "Music as Information." I immediately associated it with robotics and electronics (words that send me running for the hills) and it didn't help that I had never even seen a "breadboard" before a few classes ago. Intimidating, for sure. But as the weeks have gone by, Arduino and I have become quite friendly - to the point where I've even taken one home to spend reading week with me!

After Wednesday's "Putting it all together" class, I've not only discovered that YES, the Arduino can definitely teach me some neat things about Music as Information, but this could be something I'd be interested in as a hobby. Basically, the project that Bill took us through in class was using an Arduino and an accelerometer to communicate through the Processing program on a computer. Using a library called SoundCipher, it is possible to have the values being read from the accelerometer be represented with musical pitches. Once I realized where the class demonstration was going, the wheels started turning in my head.

I'm envisioning musical composition through body movement - a sort of marriage of interpretive dance and improvisational music. It would be a difficult art to master, but possibly rather easy to create (if I'm not underestimating the logistics here). LilyPads - the wearable Arduino - one for each sleeve and pant leg.

The specifics would be a lot easier to see in my head if I had actually been successful in getting the Processing sketch to actually play notes like Bill had done in class.

This is where the home-adventure begins. I tried following the example and directions from the class wiki. I was successful in opening the serial monitor so that I could view the values that the accelerometer was reading. When it came time to use those values to control a sketch in Processing, I was not so successful. I followed the Graph tutorial on the Arduino website and copied the code, but I wasn't sure how to get Processing to recognize the accelerometer values. The code worked and my graph ran perfectly, but it didn't show any values.

This was frustrating...I definitely don't know enough yet to diagnose problems on my own.

So... not wanting the adventure to be a total and utter fail, I left it and just played with SoundCipher for the rest of the night!

Exciting things started happening after that (well, I'm easily amused by musical ventures). I explored all of the tutorials in SoundCipher just to get a feel for what I could possibly do with it in the future. Then, I set off on a very small project, but I'm pretty proud of it, I must admit.

I created a monophonic song with the simple bing program. This program plays a single note and defines its pitch, dynamic, and duration. This is the most basic thing one can do with SoundCipher, but I wanted to see if I could really figure out how digital/algorithmic music works. The only knowledge I started with was that the numeric value assigned to a middle C note is 60. From there, I used the playPhrase program and I created a C chromatic scale to make sure the values for the notes were consecutive. Then, I created a one-octave C scale so that I could map out which notes I would be able to use for a song played in the key of C (60, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 71, 72).

And then I wrote a simple childhood song! Here's the code:

import arb.soundcipher.*;

SoundCipher sc = new SoundCipher(this);

float[] pitches = {72, 69, 65, 60, 62, 64, 65, 62, 65, 60, 67, 72, 69, 65, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 67, 69, 70, 69, 67, 72, 69, 67, 65, 67, 69, 65, 62, 65, 62, 60, 60, 65, 69, 67, 60, 65, 69, 67, 69, 70, 72, 69, 65, 67, 60, 65};

float [] dynamics = {80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80 ,80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80, 80};

float[] durations = {1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, .5, .5, .5, 1, .5, 3, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, .5, .5, .5, 1, .5, 3, .5, .5, .5, .5, 1, .5, .5, 2, .5, 1, .5, 1, .5, .5, 2, .5, 1, .5, 1,.5, 1, .5, .5, .5, .5,.5,.5,.5,1,.5, 3};

sc.playPhrase(pitches, dynamics, durations);

I understand that there are very few other people who will be excited by this, but it was an extremely satisfying experience for me.

CREATION.

It's a bit annoying that each and every note has to be assigned a dynamic. In this case, I just wanted all the notes to be the same intensity. I'm sure there's a way to do it, but I don't know how. Also, I wonder if there is a way to set a time signature - because I realized halfway through my song that I was smart enough to pick one that was in 6/8 time...which is a pain to feel out, especially when trying to convert beats into seconds.

But there you have it - "Bicycle Built for Two" is a musical and historic gem, one must admit.

In the future, I would really like to figure out how to use the score setting so that I could add chords on top of the notes and have them play at a specific time. Also, perhaps one day, I can understand how the algorithms work...but that would require a better grasp of mathematics in general...and I am in the field of history for a reason...

In the meantime, must resist the urge to recreate the theme song from Super Mario Brothers!