Exercise #2

For this exercise we were asked to ‘Look for some organic or quasi-organic material or living system that can be used as a substrate for the transmission of information and thus as some sort of cybernetic control system or organic “computer”. Research the material’s properties and brainstorm ways that it can be stimulated or perturbed so that it grows, moves or otherwise changes state. Research and experiment with the material and diagram a possible cybernetic system that could be built with it. The idea I came up with inspired by my sound art class with a toy piano and graphite. For this exercise I would take the resister out of the piano and hook it up to the graphite on paper in which are connected from where the resister was from a negative and positive wire negative on one end and positive on the other. Depending on how thick or wild the graphite trail depends on the tone of the piano keys. I also thought of rapping aluminum foil around my fingers and sliding it across the graphite line that is connected to the piano to act as some sort of equalizer or to change the tones.