How did we make the step sequencer?

1. Make bacteria plate

   With bacteria expressing chromoproteins or fluorescent proteins. All parts taken from the Registry. See constructs here. See protocols here.

2. Take picture

   Using a webcam. Import the picture into the laptop and the Processing environment.

3. Processing

   Processing is a coding language and environment that allows us to translate data from an image into binary data. Blob detection is an open-source code that allows us to detect areas of high contrast (bacterial colonies). We obtain the RGB value of the blobs detected, and convert the positions into a 16X16 grid. Click here to see our code.

4. Sound mapping

   Each position on the grid is mapped to a different note. Each row is the same note. Notes increase by half-steps in the column.

5. Music
   

   ♪ ♫ ♪ ♫

How did we make the tube rack?

1. Laser cut tube rack

   Using a laser cutter, we created a custom tube rack. 8 slots allow our system to run on 4/4 time.

2. Fill tubes with colorful bacteria

   Our initial intention was to use bioluminescent, luciferase-generating bacteria. We realized the light from these constructs was dim and could only be seen in the dark, and thus not practical for our music generator. In the end, we switched to chromoprotein expressing bacteria. See constructs here. See protocols here.

3. Take picture

   Using a webcam. Import the picture into the laptop and the Processing environment.

4. Processing

   Processing is a coding language and environment that allows us to identify the RGB value of a specific position and correlate that value with a drum sound. Click here to see our code.

5. Beats
   

   Boots and cats and boots and cats.

How did we make the button control?

1. Obtain equipment

   We used equipment from the awesome company DFRobot. An Arduino board allows us to take the data from physical interaction (i.e pushing a button) into commands such as adding a sound layer or decreasing the volume.
   
   Specifically we used:
   7 buttons
   5 sliders
   1 Arduino Leonardo
   3 bread boards
   Lots of wires
   Lots of screws
   Lots of resistors
   Lots of sodering

2. Create code
   

   Click here to see the code.

What is the 40min sound?

We wanted to represent a real-time biological oscillator, the natural form of a beat-generator. We would like to acknowledge the current limitations of biological systems due to time-scales of expression, inherent randomness, and lack of mainpulated synchronization, and the role of electronics in the future of synthetic biology.