Bio Symphony
Group: Fangxue, Vicki, May, and Ranga (me)
17th January — 21st January
Brief: Design and make a bio-material instrument and play it together.
For this brief, we specifically chose to experiment with materials that are often considered waste. We did experiment with living bacteria as well, though. We decided to transform the nature of the bio-materials to create audio experiences.
Research: We began researching the brief, which had very little allotted time since the brief had such a small window. We saw how sounds of fungi growing had been captured and converted into music, and having understood the base of the matter, we started doing things.
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The first part was testing the contact microphones. We were planning on using them to capture bacterial sounds, so we needed to make sure they would work. To test these, we created biomaterial sounds on a larger scale — we dropped a mint in some carbonated soda and tried to capture the resultant sound. The contact microphone didn’t work, so we moved on to a better microphone.
We use bio-materials that would be readily available and sometimes wasted, like edible food produce. We chose some cheese, some red meat and bananas, since these spoil quickly and often without external forces. We had bacterial bases made using Agar, Gelatin, Alginate and Carrageenan solutions and preparations.
So we sped up the rotting process: we decided to mash up the biomaterials and then lather the bacterial solutions on them. And then we left them overnight.
We got some good recordings of the materials being mashed and being forced to decompose, and we decided to use a drum pad combined with Ableton to make beats out of the resultant recordings. That idea got squashed, in part because the drum pad was not organic, and in part because the code required to get the sensor running was too complex to be done in the short amount of time we had left.
We decided to switch up our biomaterials as well as the bacteria in question: we chose flour as our biomaterial and decided to go with yeast as the bacteria.
The resultant biomaterial was breadlike, and we experimented with multiple forms: boiled, frozen, steamed and baked. We found the sound made from tapping the materials changed according to the different forms. This was quite a win, since we had found that naturally inert biomaterials did not make a lot of noise, let alone a harmonious sound. So we created a sort of drum pad again, but with biomaterials being the “drums” in the scenario as expected.
Takeaway: It is easier to work with people who live close to a central meeting point. There were some timing issues, as some people were early risers and some stayed up at night. I also understood WhatsApp messages and infrequent Zoom meetings were not remotely comparable to sitting around a table and discussing our ideas and updates.
