Crafting Sound Lab Team

Welcome to the Crafting Sound Lab blog!  Led by Technical Director Abby Aresty, we are an undergraduate research lab at Oberlin College and Conservatory located within the TIMARA department exploring the intersection of handmade electronics, traditional crafts, and code.  Our projects explore topics including electronic music pedagogy, outreach, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math education), sound art, and sound art installations.

During Spring semester 2020, we are working on four projects, described below. Sonic Arts in Society and the Girls Electronic Arts Retreat each incorporate several different types of creative projects and will have some overlap, whereas Of Earth and Sun and The ArtiFACT Project are independent projects. 

• Sonic Arts in Society
• Sonic Arts in Society is a community-based learning course that brings innovative music technology workshops and programming—with an emphasis on interdisciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) activities—to community members of all ages. Students apply their creative aptitudes and technical skills to the development and implementation of workshops and programming tailored to the needs of the communities that they will serve. In this first course iteration, students enrolled in Sonic Arts in Society will engage Elyria Medical Center hospital system populations in creative arts-based workshops. Programming is coordinated with UH Connor Integrative Health Network and is guided by institutional leadership at Oberlin College and the University Hospitals Elyria Medical Center. Creative workshops will provide hospital staff, patients and community members with additional therapeutic opportunities to promote expression; to serve as a bridge to connect students with opportunity to provide positive experiences to medical community members; pilot and explore the potential for further collaboration on multimodal forms of technologically-mediated expression within the medical arena; and will increase psychosocial support for health system via inclusion of academic communities and cross collaborations. Programming will include a legacy project for palliative care patients, a mindfulness, crafting, and breathing workshop in collaboration with COPD programming at EMC, and a gratitude project designed for the entire hospital community.  The project started with a Winter Term course which you can read about here. 
• The Girls Electronic Arts Retreat
• The Girls Electronic Arts Retreat (GEAR) is a 5-day day camp for 3rd to 5th grade girls that fosters curiosity, creativity, and confidence through playful, collaborative projects that integrate science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. GEAR is housed in the newly renovated Technology in Music and Related Arts (TIMARA) studios at Oberlin Conservatory and co-sponsored by TIMARA, Oberlin Center for the Arts (OCA), and the Community Music School (CMS). The pilot session of GEAR was made possible by generous funding from the Oberlin Conservatory Dean's office, the Oberlin College and Conservatory's grants office, the TIMARA Department at Oberlin Conservatory, the Bill Long Foundation, and OCA.  Why send your daughter to GEAR? According to a recent study, the perception that certain fields require an innate brilliance is enough to deter many women from pursuing careers in these fields. Another study found that girls as young as six years of age tend to believe that brilliance is a male trait. By the time they reach college, women in technical fields are often already at a disadvantage since their male peers have been immersed in the culture for years; without the right support system and peer group, it is easy for them to think that a career in technology is simply not for them. At GEAR, girls build confidence in technology in a supportive environment through fun, hands-on activities.
• The ArtiFACT Project 
• ArtiFACT is a workshop and exhibit series that uses storytelling, listening, and making to build community across cultures. Across cultures, humans make, buy, find, share, or gift objects.  While some objects are unique, mass production allows us to purchase indistinguishable objects to satisfy whims or fulfill needs.  Over time, all objects take on new meanings as they remind us of moments, people, or places. ArtiFACT is a collaborative exhibit in which visitors scan barcodes affixed to 3D printed object replicas to hear the story of each item, as told by the person to whom it belongs.  ArtiFACT begins with workshops that pair communities across cultures to seed ArtiFACT exhibits with stories and objects. For example, workshops might connect immigrant and vet centers or a community college and liberal arts college in close proximity. Participants bring a meaningful object and use 3D scanners and printers to create replicas. They interview each other and record descriptions of their object’s physical appearance, its personal and cultural significance, and a related memory. Participants may attend additional workshops to continue to build community and the installation itself. ArtiFACT appropriates the trappings of commodification and consumer culture as a vehicle for storytelling and community building. Preparatory workshops facilitate community-building through the development of a common creative project. Using 3D replicas rather than the original artifacts reminds viewers that objects may be one of many, while scanning affixed barcodes is suggestive of a traditionally consumptive interaction.  However, the stories shared afford listeners opportunities to reflect on intangible meanings of material artifacts.
• Of Earth and Sun
• In 2013, as part of its Biophilia Enhanced through Art (BETA) project, the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh commissioned a site-specific sound installation for its Center for Sustainable Landscapes (CSL). The first iteration of the installation, Of Earth and Sun, is created from field recordings I collected in Pittsburgh during 2013-14. The project explores the ways sound can traverse thresholds and expand the building’s natural acoustic horizon. At the CSL, dynamic, composed soundscapes play through twelve surface transducers on windows throughout the atrium. The windows amplify the transducers’ vibrations and blend indoor and outdoor spaces. The CSL is one of the greenest buildings in the world: it is certified as LEED Platinum building and it achieved one of the most rigorous green building standards when it became certified as a Living Building. To achieve Living Building status, structures must meet the most stringent criteria in energy efficiency; the Living Building Challenge also expands traditional definitions of sustainability in requiring buildings to find ways to connect occupants to the beauty of the natural environment. The CSL meets these criteria in its architectural design by providing exit points on all three floors to a beautiful adjacent garden.  Phipps Director Richard Piacentini launched the BETA Project to further enhance the building’s connection to the outdoors through art. Through my project, Mr. Piacentini sought to counteract the acoustic bubble created by the building’s triple-paned glass windows and to facilitate a connection to the outdoors through sound.  The current iteration of the project includes a relatively small number of dynamic, precomposed soundscapes.  The infrastructure (computer, surface transducers, wiring) is already completely paid for and installed, so the tasks that remain are entirely in developing code and editing audio. The next phase of this project involves finalizing, testing, and implementing code developed by myself and by recent research assistants to generate soundscapes from prerecorded sounds based on local weather conditions.  

Come back soon to learn more about Crafting Sound Lab members below!