The exhibit has been shown at many galleries including The Crypt (London) Motorcycle showroom and Lakota (Bristol).

More photos of the build process and the final product including example snow flakes. Source code is here.

I would like to thank Janko Gravner, David Griffeath and Clifford A. Reiter for their research in the field. Their work was used extensively to build this computer model. Lou Smith for his interest and work building the physical installation. Rachel Carless for help with the funding application. David Murray-Rust for computer help and advice. The open source community for providing all the excellent free software with which this exhibit was built.

Comments by the public:

• We came for our christmas party had such great fun , made xmas cards and snow flakes. Thank you
• Loved it all, but especially the snowflake machine and advent calendar.
• I loved the snow flake guys work Thanks.
• Personally thought the snowflake was the best ! Thank you for an interesting afternoon.
• We particularly enjoyed the installation by Matthew Venn where we produced our own digital snow flake.
• Loved the snow flake machine.
• I made my own snowflake to take home great idea.
• I made the opening night and it was absolutely mind blowing, came back again to play on the snow flake machine.

We ran a demo at the blue hut youth club on Thursday where it was very well received!

Right now the system uses pedals to trigger the sounds, and we are not using illuminating photo frames. When we have hired the system a few times I will add the illuminating frames.

If you are interested in using the system or collaborating on a new project, please contact me!

I got the puredata patch to respond to midi, so now we can sequence the gas organ. For the flame and flesh event we’re going to have some performers who want to play their electric violin and cello with the gas organ. Martin came in and played a sequence (top right photo) which we recorded, and you can hear here.

This project looks like it might be revitalised soon in a web2 stylee.

We have a big event called ‘flame and flesh’ happening on the 22nd February at Corsica Studios. Come along and check it out!

update!

the test went really well! We have good intuitive control of the organ using 2 wiimotes. I’ve also got a basic random mode going down too. It was great seeing Shawn dancing with the controllers because the sound was so well linked to his movement. I began to be able to recognise and predict what the sound was going to do as he moved. I think the use of wiimotes is going to really make waves in synchronising music, movement, visuals and who knows what else. Exciting!

just insert the secondary into the slot and the backup will start automatically.

To restore:

start with mirror drive empty

if step 1 is done then:

if step 1 is not done then:

I noticed when doing step 6 that status a is flash green, and b is flashing green/red (not exactly as above).

linux

• compiling the bluetooth network support as modules. I needed bluetooth, rfcomm, hidp and l2cap. I’m using a thinkpad t42 with builtin bluetooth. The bluetooth adapter is connected to the usb bus, so I also needed hci_usb.

• installed bluez-utils, then with the wiimote on and in discovery mode run ‘hcitool scan’; finds the Nintendo wiimote!

ping:555:$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:0A:3A:6B:BD:71       n/a
        00:14:51:8C:C4:78       core
        00:19:63:1B:15:2F       Me
        00:19:1D:30:06:CE       Nintendo RVL-CNT-01

pure data

• the cwiid library ( http://www.abstrakraft.org/), version 0.4.01
• the puredata external ( http://mikewoz.com/index.php?page=pd-stuff).
• the wiimote.pd help shows how it all looks:

Jack + pd + wiimote + freewheeling = remote controlled looping!

Then I started freewheeling and connected that to pd using jack. I controlled the freewheeling overdub button with pd to test and it all works! So that is proof of concept of a wiimote controlled loop setup.

future…

• I’m going to hack up volume control with the wiimote over the weekend

• I want to control master out granular filter

• I want to find out is whether I can get freewheeling to give me status (maybe as a midi message or unix socket) back to PD so I can control the blue lights on the wii to give me status (like if overdub mode is on). I imagine that would be cool for any control surface.