SPACEROCK: Music From A Metal World
October 2021
NASA Psyche Inspired
36 x 24 x 24 in.
posterboard, acrylic paint, metal wire, ball bearings
stepper motors, LEDs, magnetometer, Arduino Feather, Arduino Uno, Teensy 2.0++, MaxMSP, Python
Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Logic Pro
An ensemble of experimental musical instruments, each inspired by one of the Psyche spacecraft's science instruments, that plays compositions generated from an image. The user chooses the image and directly "plays" the percussive instrument by feeding ball bearings into it.
PERCUSSION: Inspired by Psyche's Gamma Ray/Neutron Spectrometer, which detects particle impacts.
BASS: Inspired by Psyche's magnetometer.
LEAD: Inspired by Psyche's X-Band High Gain Antenna, which sends information to Earth through photon streams.
CHORDS: Inspired by Psyche's Multispectral Imager, which takes pictures in multiple light frequencies.
SPACEROCK uses MaxMSP to synthesize and process sounds, Python to generate compositions from images, and uses an Arduino Feather, Arduino Uno, and Teensy 2.0++ to control a magnetometer, stepper motors, and LEDs, respectively.
Github repository: https://github.com/ryurongliu/spacerock
Psyche Inspired webpage: https://psyche.asu.edu/gallery/spacerock-music-from-a-metal-world/
Listen to SPACEROCK below.
