Team:NYU Shanghai/Design

Project
- Design
- Parts
- Code
- Judging
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Notebook

Overview

We've created an interactive beat generating machine.

The tube rack generates the background beat. Tubes contain colorful bacteria, and each color corresponds to a different bass sound. Sound is read left to right.

Bacterial colonies are translated into a step sequencer. Bacteria express fluorescent or chromoproteins. Different colors correspond to different instruments.

Allows user to control cameras and volume.

Represents an oscillator.

Step Sequencer

How did we make the step sequencer?

Make bacteria plate
With bacteria expressing chromoproteins or fluorescent proteins. All parts taken from the Registry. See constructs here. See protocols here.
Take picture
Using a webcam. Import the picture into the laptop and the Processing environment.
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.
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.
Music

♪ ♫ ♪ ♫

Tube Rack

How did we make the tube rack?

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

Boots and cats and boots and cats.

Button Control

How did we make the button control?

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
Create code

Click here to see the code.

40 Minute Sound

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.