Discursano Discursinos

Nikolas Gomes Ferranddis 1

1 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Av. Paulo Gama, 110 - Farroupilha, Porto Alegre - RS, 90040-060
n.ferranddis@gmail.com

This work explains about a performance
created starting on an Arduino Uno R3
prototype board and the Ableton Live software
to create sounds, textures and rhythms through
words, letter and characters sonification. The
prototype board has the function of processing
data that are inserted through Arduino IDEs
serial monitor and then converting this data on
electrical signal in square waves shape with
defined pitch to be recorded on Ableton Live
software and processed during the performance,
creating textures, sonorities and rhythms
through the performers intentions and
improvisation.
The performance developed through my
research work as an fellowship of scientific
initiation of the research group Grupo de
Pesquisa em Gnero, Corpo e Msica (Gender,
Body and Music Research Group), together
with the collective Medula and the research
groups Grupo de Pesquisa em Criao Sonora
(Sound Creation Research Group) and Grupo de
Pesquisa Alm da ilustrao: o exerccio de
relaes insubordinadas entre textos cnicos
(Beyond the Ilustration Research Group: the
exercise of insubordinated relations between
scenic texts). Medula is an collective of sound
experimentation that was created to present
pubicly the artistic works developed as part of
research works of the involved research groups
cited.
I have been working together with this
collective since 2015 and developing works as
the album Lusque-Fusque, released by the label
Electronic Girls in Italy, and also the show
Foras (Forces), presented for the first time at
3rd KinoBeat festival in Porto Alegre. With the
collective, I started to get involved with
algorithmic composition technologies,
improvising with textures made from
programming technologies like ByteBeat, Pure
Data and Max/MSP.
The code used here is based on the
example code Melody[1]. from the Arduino
website. With some changes, I could implement
serial comunication through serial monitor with
the board, so I can send words that would be
converted to sounds. I also changed the original
array, which contemplated few notes, so that it
could handle 52 notes. This way I can get a
defined pitch to each letter between a and z
and also A and Z.
serial comunication.
In the figure above I show how I wrote
the code to convert the words that the Arduino
receives through the serial port in characters to
be read by the Arduino Melody code. The
integer tamanho is used to determine the size of
the CharArray notes and the integer length is
used to determine the lenght of the loop that
will generate the pitchs.
I also added to the code analogic reads of
two potentiometers to control the speed in
which the pitchs are played by the Arduino
board. One controls each sound emitted
duration and the other controls the delay
between this sounds. This way I can change
from a melodic phrase with long duration notes
with all notes connected with each other to
melodic phrases in staccato, with all the
variations between this two limits. I also can
define the time that it takes a word to be emitted
for complete.
control the tempo and the articulation.
In this code example I used the integer
andamento to determine the speed that the
Arduino board will trigger the pitches and the
integer stacato to determine the delay between
each triggered wave.
In the Ableton Live software I record the
sound resulting of the phrases inserted at the
Arduino board and distribute through differents
software tracks, where any track could have
differents effects, according to the sound aimed
in that moment. This sound can vary between
textures made with many audio loops
overlapped, textures made from the use of
effects of the software itself, rhythm patterns
resulting from the different articulations of the
words, long melodies resulting of the use of
effects and also the differents used words.
The performance dialogues with the
concept of Transoperatividade (transoperativity)
proposed by Machado, where the quality of an
action, procedure made with or over something
that generates a result and that, by extension or
casuality, ends up generating another action or
another procedure.[2]. In this performance the
transoperativity is made by extension. An
extension of meanings, where a word that
contains its original semantic sense and sound
senses, starts to contain a second sound sense
that implicates on new senses for each listener.
During the performance, I use the serial
monitor from the Arduino IDE to send phrases
to the board. The whole process is accompanied
by the viewers through a computer screen
projection, making the experience sound and
visual.
By making meanings and overlapping
meanings, I play with the deterritorialization
[3]. of the word. Playing with words and its
respecting sound results is like a free
improvisation that generates provisional
territories in an environment of constant
deterritorialization. [4]. which refers to the
listener its semantic senses where It is, in
reality, a process of successive transformations
of a plan towards territorialization. [4]. By
taking the word from its original state and
making it the means to a sound end, I
reterritorialize and create new territories to this
semantic meanings.
References
[1] Arduino Melody.
https://www.arduino.cc/en/tutorial/melody
ltimo acesso em: 29 de maio de 2017
[2] Chico Machado. Prncipios gerais da
Transoperatividade. IX Congresso da Abrace.
Uberlndia - MG, 2016.
[3] Franois Zourabichvilli. O Vocabulrio
de Deleuza. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira,
2004.
[4] Rogrio Luiz Moraes Costa. A livre
improvisao musical e a filosofia de Gilles
Deleuze. Per Musi, Belo Horizonte, n.26, 2012,
p.60-66.