Melodybot write up

Okay so Yanisa and I were asked to write up brief description, for presentation, about what our group is aiming to achieve and present it in a way that relates to the over all aesthetic. The write up is as follows:

Music is movement for the soul and an expression of the human spirit. We are often in our most inspired state whilst listening to. We, as a group of students, have chosen to find music in technology. Our intention is to craft an audio expression from a simple makerbot three dimensional print. Our method involves reading the profile of a physical makerbot print object and converting or interpreting, digitally, the knowledge into an expressive audio output.

Music is such an expressive form of celebration that its very nature is quite meaningful for such a simple pleasure. It is noted that by aesthetics it is meant not just to count towards the ‘look’ of what is being expressed but rather the entire complexity as a whole that we as a group are trying to achieve together. The aesthetic of our project stems from the combined inspiration and idea of our group of 11 students that we’ve drawn from.

A key component behind what the melodybot does is mathematics. The ‘mathematics of sound’ is the brain function, while the music is the soul and the melodybot print is the body. There is a combination of different mathematics behind the music from the physicality of the melodybot, right through to the programming of how we reinterpret the prints into music. Using computer software and simple geometry we are able to design and create prints that are all about the music.

The melodybot part is a modified version of an original makerbot. The chassis of a makerbot has been altered so that a melodybot casing can be created. Inside the melodybot is a turn table, sourced from an old record player, upon which the print is placed. This print is ‘read’ by melodybot and converted into digital information that we can analyse, understand and alter in some way with a computer. As the melodybot plays, it tells a musical story of the print.