Concept:
I want to create a heart out of EL wire that beats in accordance to voices.
Input and Output:
The image of the heart will be dynamically changing to stimuli. The stimuli will be voice. However loud or quite you speak or a room is will correspond to the output of the image. The output will be changing to correspond to a beating heart. When the room is silent the image will remain static of a heart and as you begin to speak or make noise the heart will seem to beat faster. This will be done with different strips of EL wire lighting up at different speeds (like stop-motion-animation). Four frames will be used to create the image of the beating heart. I am thinking of making the sound of a heart beat play in sync with the heart, but I’m still thinking about how to include this without it interfering with the audio input- potentially making it a combination of the sound loudness (decibels) as well as frequency (Hz).
Drawings/Mockups:
Below are the drawings that would be played in order 1-2-3-4-3-2-1 in order to make the visual of a beating heart. This is also shown in the video. The outline of each would be in EL wire and would turn on and off in accordance to the order listed before.
Artist Questions
- How would I connect EL wire with an Arduino Uno?
- What else can I do to make my concept even better?
Now I am not experienced with this type of data input, so I am not sure of the practicality of this idea. But if you wanted to avoid the heart beat being involved in your input data that makes the heart beat, you could have the heart’s audio recorder turn on and off, so it stops for a brief second when the heart beat plays out, then picks back up as soon as the beat is over.
I think this is absolutely amazing. I imagine you might run into challenges with overlapping the different frames so I’m interested to see how you solve that. Im excited to see how this turns out
Could probably connect separate pieces of EL Wire to different output pins on the Arduino. You could also make a single heart design and have it pulse at the same beat of a heart, that way it uses less wire.
I think that this is a super fun idea and that you can take it in many different directions. You could have different layers, maybe acrylic layers, where a different frame is on a layer and then that is how you can switch throughout the heart beats. I think itd be cool if you did that and then had a each different beat be a different color.
I like the concept, but it might be difficult to align the voices with a heartbeat in a way that seems natural. I say this because I’ve often found that people associate a heat beat with consistency, and voices tend to be a little more chaotic. However, that could be the entire point. in which case, there is a very interesting message to be found by contradicting what’s expected. For the animation, were you only going to have those 4 frames, or animate the transitions as well?
This idea is pretty cool, I was also thinking of layering acrylic sheets for each frame (similar to Binh), or you could do something similar to a rotary flipbook (or along this line).
This sounds like it could be a very nice project. I’m wondering what sort of support material or structure will be needed to keep the EL wire in its shape.
In terms of controlling the EL wire animation with an Arduino, there are a few ways to do it. Sparkfun made it a dedicated board for this – it’s discontinued sadly but there seem to be a few still out there! https://www.dfrobot.com/product-776.html
You could also do it in a more basic way with relays, along these lines: https://www.instructables.com/Control-EL-Wire-with-an-Arduino/
Coolneon also sells some components that can do this as well as some simpler EL sequencers if Arduino control turns out to be unfeasible – check out their online catalog https://www.coolneon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/2020-CoolNeon-catalog.pdf
The idea is cool but, as mentioned above, there can be a lot of underwater rocks to it.
You probably would need to create a code where you will have a sufficient amount of noise reduction, or, as also mentioned above, you can make it in such a way that the heart is beating with constant speed and starts to beat faster whenever voices are recognized (however, I’m not sure how it might change the message of your idea)
Very cool idea. I am excited to see how it turns out. I can foresee the noise in human voice frequency being difficult to for your sensor to pick up and potentially your heart beat sound output being read as human voice input creating an infinite loop.
This sounds like it’s going to be a fun project that emulates what neon signs do. EL wire can be a bit difficult to manipulate to create fine details but you’ll probably be able to achieve it with a thin wire diameter. This is going to be very cool!