Andrew Benson

This video was debuted as a looping video installation included in the Uncharted show at Hayes Valley Market, May 2008.

I just finished building, or rather stitching together my first complete wearable device, the Whisper audio wristband. I have researched and experimented with soft electronics, interactivity, sensor technologies, and conductive fibers for some time now, but this is the first standalone device that I have created that incorporates all of these concepts. Whisper was conceived as a simple wearable audio device that would be lightweight, comfortable, and provide an engaging and simple interface that was capable of producing interesting noises. I had recently been working on AVR code for sound synthesis for my Whispering Islands installation, and saw this as a good opportunity to try and create an interactive and wearable unit. The synthesis is done using an AVR ATTiny45 chip programmed to run a simple FM routine using a 256-point sine wave table. Carrier frequency is controlled by the brown button-knob, and the FM modulator frequency and amount are controlled by the pressure sensitive fabric pads. The tiny speaker will resonate with certain settings, creating some occasional loud squawks. Otherwise, the device creates some quiet, but subtly wonderful sounds.

Heather Brubaker and Marie-Claire Miesels recently curated me into a group show called “Uncharted: Imaginary Landscapes” at the Hayes Valley Market in SF. I found out about the show the day after my daughter Djuna was born, and convinced myself that I could put together a video, site specific sound installation, and some paintings by the time Djuna was a couple of months old. After having focussed so heavily on painting this last year, I really wanted to spend some time experimenting and doing a multi-disciplinary project. I had also been working on some code to run various synthesis techniques on tiny AVR chips, and wanted to try incorporating that into one of my felt and thread installations. Originally, I was going to make stuffed island forms with embedded circuitry and have them floating on the thread meshwork. However, after playing around with that I determined that it looked to plushy and instead developed the felt island structures by handstitching together bits of felt to resemble forms from some of my paintings. An attiny26 chip provided 7 channels of randomly dispersed chatters and noises that were played through tiny cellphone speakers embedded in each of the islands.

I also installed a 3-minute video loop that I recently finished, and a pair of acrylic-on-paper works.