Marguerite Tricaud
Sonic Swarm is a workshop created for the Digital Innovation Season 2022 at Central Saint Martins.
The workshop explores the creative potential of self-organising systems, inspired by the behaviour of living organisms.
Participants are invited to co-create a digital ecosystem made of independent electronic devices that respond to their environment and to their neighbours.
Small electronic devices are provided to the group. Each device is able to sense its environment and generate light and sound. Participants learn to program the behaviour of their own device, and when all devices are brought together, they generate emergent soundscapes and visual effects. Through rule-based design, they learn about how natural and digital ecosystems are able to self-organize and how they generate emergent structures.
Hardware
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- Bespoke circuit board and casing
- Teensy 4.0
- Teensy Audio Shield Rev D
- LDR
- LED
- Speaker
Firmware
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More information on the programmable behaviours as well as the source code for the devices are available on GitHub.