Shared adventure of making a creative tool

In the course of a 2 months-long residency at osmo/za, artist and synth developer Václav Peloušek will work closely with the local community while facilitating the process of developing a creative tool – from ideation to the final product. The aim of the residency is to actively involve a group of participants in a comprehensive, bottom-up process of tool development, which will not only enrich the artistic practice, but also sustain the community by using the product as a potential source of its income.

The process will cover the following steps: tool ideation, interface design, prototyping, drawing schematics, making and ordering circuit boards, making bills of materials, writing Arduino library, testing, DIY kit making, documentation, designing a workshop format and product presentation.

Václav’s proposal is to develop a sensoric tool based on Arduino called The Sensor Synth, which can be used for several purposes – from sound generation to interactive installations or theater performances. However, this is just an initial idea and you are invited to join him on a kick-off event, where we will be discussing our needs and interests and see if there is a better idea out there that we could work on together during Vaclav’s stay in Ljubljana!

The Sensor Synth could take several sensor inputs (3 to 5), calibrate them without need of any coding and turn them directly into synthesized sound. While synthesizing sound directly on the unit is great for initial testing, the Sensor Synth could also turn those signals into control voltages or MIDI to control other synthesizers, effects or simply anything from wearables to interactive installations. The open ended design in a form of open source Arduino shield will inspire advanced users to hack the inner mechanics to fit even more custom purposes and complex behaviours.