Today, the day passed quick. we started off quite early, had a healthy porridge breakfast (mika not, she does not like porridge:( ). Mag showed Mika her set up and how Organelle works. Actually it is also a new instrument for her and she is “not a computer person”. Organelle is a small computer that runs PureData patches inside. She spent last few weeks figuring out how it works, how to upload patches, how each patches sounds….
Then Mika showed Mag the sensor setup she brought. As the residency is only 3 weeks, she already made a test sensor/costume setting so we can start rehearsing soon. The main board is Bela mini board that is sitting on the collar (yes, the round fabric thing is a collar to wear around one’s neck) The Bela board also runs PureData. The idea is to run machine learning on PureData (ml lib) to map the sensor data to control value for the Organelle. Mika added 4 LEDs on the collar that can be controlled by the Bela. This can be a indicator for us to monitor what Bela is reading/calculating. The sensors are made of Kinesiology Tape (tutorial coming soon!) so it is quick to make, stretchy and easy to apply on body parts. we will try different placement options to find out what makes the best control for the performance.
After looking at few Organelle patches, we decided to start with Analog Style patch that came with the Organelle. Organelle comes with a wifi USB dongle and can act as an access point. After few setting changes, Mika managed to connect Bela (she added wifi dongle on this one as well) with the Organelle and send out a value over OSC to Organelle and take over one of the knobs. This is a good start. Now we know that Bela can control Organelle.
Mika consulted Ingo about networking architecture as he is an expert on this (he is one of the author of the Rabbit Control). The above sketch is the master plan of the architecture. We will start building this tomorrow.
We ended the day with watching a live stream show by Floating Spectrum.