Chrysalis

• Date 2014
• Location hynes convention center and berklee college of music
• Material wood, LEDs, arduino, raspberry pi, sensors

Collaboration between Chelsea Southard, Shaye Jones – Visual Artist and Gabe Nichols – Poet

Chrysalis is an installation and experience designed to be heard, learned, and touched. The collaboration of an artist, a programmer, and a poet; Chrysalis is a confluence of creative approaches to one central idea:

An interaction between Technology and Nature.

In this installation, human touch activates a modulation of the aural experience. Human touch changes natural acoustical voices into sounds of electronic synthesis. Upon placing one’s hand on a sensor, the process begins. A process that is technological, as well as personal.

The poem was translated and recorded into 10 different languages for use in the installation. This is the audio for all the translations of the poem.

Translators and Voice Actors:

English – Shaye Jones and Mark Southard

Spanish – Daniel Gonzalez and Pamela Hersch

Turkish – Ali Ceyhun Kartalsuna and Zeynep Tanyalcin

Luxembourgish – Achal Murthy

German -Jannek Zechner

Urdu – Adnan Ashraf Ghumman

Hebrew – Daniel Perry

Chinese- Ni Cai

Russian – Maksim Krykhtin

Italian – Francesco Fusco

Recorded by: Chelsea Southard

Mixed by: Maksim Krykhtin

Chrysalis is an installation and experience designed to be heard, learned, and touched.

This is the sound Chrysalis makes when being touched.

The touch sensors built into the structure are powered by an Arduino and the synthesis is all designed in Csound. The system runs entirely on one Raspberry Pi.

The six effects designed for each sensor are based on lines within the poem from the audio, Crossing the Night.

Symphony of Stars: Long Reverb put through a resonator

Sweet piney stickiness: Waveset time stretching

Murmur of Earth: Pitch Shifting and Delay

March and Machine: Resonator with sample and hold frequency

The Grove: Reverse playback

Reverberating Voice: Comb filter and delay

Sound Design and Arduino Programming: Chelsea Southard

Sound Design and Pi Programming: Paul Batchelor