Artefacts & Installations

Bird more while You are living for You'll be a long time dead

A crypto-ceremonial installation ``Bird more while You are living for You'll be a long time dead'' is a first part off my first artistic polyptychon ``Life & Death'' which has been presented at Rundgang 2023. Centered around a death mask of my father discretely hidden from the public view amidst no-entry ceremonial Zone, the piece is complemented with a ceramic bird-like pipe, one listening system and multiple artificial bird-song generators.

After accepting to follow certain instructions, the visitor is granted the access into the Zone where he can use the pipe to whistle any kind of tune he/she wishes to do whistle. The listening system composed of a specially optimized Fast Fourier Transform program running on a Raspberry Pi Zero embedded in the death mask detects the whistle and based on the frequency detected, sends out commands to diverse artificial birds located both in interior as well as in exterior of the ceremonial space.

The last part of the polyptychon Life & Death will be presented in 2030.

Magic Wand 1

A bamboo stick washed ashore on Playa Cocalito / Nicoya Peninsula / Costarica has been cut in 3 modules, smuggled into Europe and endowed with strong neodymium magnets so that modules form a whole again.

The hollow space within the module 1 is used as a contained for the radiation-detecting Müller tube connected to a fully functioning Arduino-based Geiger counter. Hoping that I will never need to use it elsewhere than to measure the radioactivity of uranium-glazed tiles at U-Bahn station Rosenthaler Platz, it's still wiser to be safe than sorry ...

The hollow space within the module 2 contains an Arduino Nano Connect system endowed with a battery, I2C gyroscope, speaker and a microphone. Based on the position of the tube, the microcontroller either records or plays back the audio buffer. The intention behind such "sonic imitation" is to research and establish communication with birds in the most natural way.

Note: Reassembled magic Wand 1 is present on the right side of the previous photo

Magic Wand 0

Magic Wand 0 (MW0) is the main teacher artefact issued from the teacher.solar project. In its essence, MW0 is a headless - e.g. no screen and no keyboard - RaspberryPi computer attached and a solar Powerbank which serves as a main server to which students connect during diverse outdoor education (OE) sessions.

RaspberryPi has additional components - notably the GSM module and 4-microphone circular LED Respeaker HAT - attached to it. Software-wise, it runs a Raspbian Linux with additional systemd services (teacher.js, matrix-synapse, Janus, Kastalia KMS, nginx, bluesalsa u.s.w.) in order to provide completely autark OE experience.

The whole system is attached to an awkward piece of wood of unknown origin making the whole setup both piece of art and teacher instrument in the same time. Additional Arduino microcontroller with 12 different sensor types is also attached to the Wand.

MW0 is more closely described in \cite{hromadathree}.

Personal Primer

Personal Primer is an AI-supported “Bildungsinstrument” aiming to harness advantages and possibilities offered by digital technologies for the purpose of education of elementary school pupils, most notably the acquisition of basic literacy (i.e. reading, writing, arithmetic) and promotion of informatic thinking. Currently, we have four prototypes satisfying 11 out of the 23 roadmap properties: embooked, unique, adaptable, modular, circadian, habit-disrupting, multimodal, speech-based, narrative, online-offline and monotasking. A concept of "human-machine peer learning" (HMPL) where human learns something from the machine (e.g. reading, foreign language) in the same time as machine learns something from the human (e.g. speech recognition model adaptation) is deployed in do-it-Yourself, book-like artefact narrating not only fables of ancient India.

Videos:
https://stream.udk-berlin.de/w/gxoTarC9PK3wdumKJ8gDzx (Prix Ars Electronica 2024 submission)
https://kastalia.medienhaus.udk-berlin.de/community/data/13068.fibel_interspeech_subtitle.mp4 (accepted InterSpeech 2023 submission)

Ceci n'est pas la nature morte

A little installation displayed at Rundgang 2022 thematized the relation between reality and its representation, of simulation and the thing simulated. A vase filled with freshly cut Phlox and Gladiole flowers juxtaposed to an autostereoscopic holographic display showing a hologram of 3d-scanned vase filled with Phlox and Gladiole flowers next to which there is a hologram of a 3d-scanned vase juxtaposed to a hologram ....

A classical infinite regress feedback loop, but this time with Kinect and light field technology.

Solarpunk artefacts

Sun-powered polyphonic harp :: Music instrument I ever built & coded in the context of January 2022 Synthux Academy Hackathon. Software synthesizer Daisy Seed combined with 12 x capacitive sensor connected through conductive fiber with neodymium magnets attached to an upcycled metalic kitchen tablet. Audio out connected to a transducer (shaker) which uses kitchen table as the resonator. No battery, powered directly from the solar panel.

Solar boombox:

Code at https://github.com/hromi/SeedInstruments

Turtle Mandala

Inscription HELP composed of cca 144 dried carcasses of freshly hatched babies of species Lepidochelys olivacea who burned alive they could make it into the water. The reason for such mass extinction most probably being sand significantly more hot than normal.

Playa Ostional, Costa Rica, washed away into the sea during the next high tide.