Morecambe noisy things

As a follow-on from yesterday’s GPS Orchestra workshop, artist Jen Southern and I today spent some time refining code, dreaming up new devices and generally prodding things with vibrating pager motors to see what interesting noises we could make.

The results were a few quick prototypes taken to Morecambe for some testing along the seafront in a surprise spell of sunny weather. We made a tapping box that indicates when it is being carried at different speeds (we haven’t quite got it right yet) and a tinned assortment of pager motors that responds to what direction you’re moving in (we tried it on foot at Morecambe and also in the car back to Lancaster – nice!).

It was really interesting to see what we could achieve with a handful of components: not only in terms of producing the device and its behaviour, but also thinking about how to effectively communicate changes to the person carrying the noise.