Brief Draft 1

Davis Singletary

Sound Pipes: a sound installation that allows children to create a forest soundscape by throwing colored balls down a series of tubes with sensors connected to speakers. 

There are many methods of teaching children about the world around them, but many of those methods include the children sitting in a classroom while a teacher teaches them about the world. Sound Pipes is an installation that teaches children to associate colors with noises they would typically hear in an area with similar colors. The installation will also get the children to be active while learning by letting them interact with the installation and running around having fun. The children will be creating a soundscape around them, transforming the area into almost anything they want. The reason Sound Pipes was created was simply to have another way of teaching children that did not require them to sit in a classroom. Making learning fun is the best way to get lower schoolers to retain the material being taught, and Sound Pipes was designed to make learning fun for lower schoolers. If the ideology that inspired this installation spread around the world, it could change the way children are taught.

The creation of the installation was fraught with difficulty and failure. One of the first ideas involved dropping balls down a track that made kinetic noises with the aim of teaching students about basic physics through sound. To add complexity to the project, the initial idea evolved and went through many changes The next idea to be generated was one of the first iterations that would eventually become the final iteration. The final iteration includes two PVC pipes with 3D-printed connection pieces that hold one color sensor, servo motor, and pressure sensor each. Getting to the final iteration, however, took many attempts. Creating the 3D-printed connection piece in the 3d printing program Rhino for the pipe was the most difficult part that did not involve coding. The wiring and coding was the hardest aspect of the entire installation to overcome. All of the coding was done in the programs Arduino IDE and Max msp. Arduino IDE is the program that puts the code that was used into the arduino boards which then makes the installation work. Max msp was the program that recieved the signals from the installation and played the sounds chosen for the final working prototype.