Anthro/site Technology

During the spring of 2021, I created the technology for Alison Safford's installation Anthro/site at the Berman Museum at Ursinus College, outside of Philadelphia. The show was on view until November 2021.

Alison wanted the viewer to trigger sound when they sat in a rocking chair. Of course, no wires, it's a rocking chair, and she wanted the sound to be only audible to the chair sitter. And, there were 2 different rocking-chairs/sounds. We were lucky that the gallery had hyper-directional speakers, which magically made sound feel like it was inside your head: serendipity. The gallery also had hard working staff to install the speakers, a second set of 2" speakers, projectors, wiring, and more.

I was concerned about creating a system that wouldn't be an undo burden on the gallery, and achieved over a 1 week battery life, using a single battery (18650 batteries are great!). So, the gallery staff didn't need to turn anything on/off (it "ran" 24/7), and only needed to swap batteries once a week. We created a user-manual, and "how to change the battery" video.

I spent considerable time on the wireless communication, which ended up using hacked "keyfob" transmitters, a small Arduino controller, and learning about sleep modes to stretch the battery life. I'd probably use bluetooth-low-energy in the future.

There was a video component as well, and I used a Raspberry PI to play the video, an ambient sound channel, and the sit-in-the-chair-and-get-sound-in-your-head channel. Preliminary testing paid off, and the system didn't require any changes at installation: I did provide for flexibility of HDMI sound or headphone jack sound. Code and circuit design is at https://github.com/awgrover/alison-rockers .

I assisted Alison in modifying the rockers to incorporate a switch as part of the Arduino/keyfob system. Amusingly, we had a professional wood worker (Alison's friend) carefully cut us 2 tiny mounting blocks. We successfully mounted the switch, Arduino/keyfob/battery and wiring so they weren't easily visible by the gallery viewer, and tuned the switch interaction to be relatively subtle.

I got to help with the installation of other elements too, including movie format conversion, wiring, key-stoning, and holding things.

There was quite a bit of consultation with Alison to figure out what was important, what things weren't important, and what would give the effect she imagined.

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Link to show:

https://www.ursinus.edu/live/profiles/5753-alison-safford/_ingredients/templates/berman-2018/exhibition