Kenny J Smith

My interactive performance video.

Unfortunately the laser projector wasn’t working how I wanted it to.

Here is my final laser projector, it’s a bit rough but mechanically it works fine. You can see the two mirrors glued to stepper motors, the laser is taped in position and the circuitry is at the back.
I tried out a 5mv green laser but I put too much power into it and it died, so now I’m using a 1mv red laser. A 3.5 mm audio plug connects to two analog input pins so that audio values can be interpreted into visuals.

I was experimenting with walkman cassette tape heads and cassette tape tape surfaces. The plan is to give the audience an object that contains audio that they can play alongside a band.

The cassette tape surfaces didn’t sound that great so I tried out magnetic strip cards (e.g. eftpos cards), the cards sound good and each card has a different sound. The good thing about magnetic strip cards is that most people carry a few of these cards on them already.

To read the cards information, I unsoldered the cassette heads and connected them to longer wire. I ended up using three walkmen and fastened the cassette head readers to a long piece of acrylic. The magnetic stip cards are now able to be scrubbed along the cassette heads and create some interesting sounds.