ORB
The ORB (Oscillating Radiant Ball): musical instrument, installation piece, cosmic body.
Suspended by a wire, this spherical pendulum outputs sound and light dependent on its motion through space. With an accelerometer/gyroscope sensor at its core, the ORB can be interfaced with by swinging, holding, or spinning it.
How it works: An Arduino Nano is connected to an MPU6050 accelerometer/gyroscope sensor, which receives the motion input. This is all encased in a styrofoam ball. The Arduino’s digital pins are connected to six LED lights, which are placed on the outside of the ball. The greater the acceleration, the more lights become lit. The data from the MPU6050 is sent via the serial port to a Max/MSP patch, which uses the acceleration of each axis (x, y, z) to change the parameters of a predefined set of musical samples. Elements such as speed, pitch, EQ, volume, can all be changed by moving the ORB in different ways.
Originally, I wanted to build a sampler that relied on motion to manipulate samples. I was interested in using physical computing to create an interface for live musicians. I had used photosensors for this in the past when I built The Magic Bow, but found that they relied too much on the specific lighting environment. I thought motion as an input source would be more reliable and more intuitive.
As I built the prototype, I became inspired by the concept of expressing music with a swinging pendulum. In Steve Reich’s “Pendulum Music” (1966), microphones suspended by their cables are swung over speakers, creating momentary feedback that follows a sort of natural, repetitive order. My design shifted from a more immediate, handheld motion sampler to a pendulum that, after being swung, could dictate its own cyclical motion for an extended period of time, thanks to the force of gravity.