Arduino driven floating black ball is the creepiest/coolest thing around
— March 8th, 2014
Space Replay is a project by Francesco Tacchini, a Royal College of Art grad student, and Julinka Ebhardt and Will Yates-Johnson of Design Products:
A hovering object that explores and manipulates transitional public spaces with particular acoustic properties. By constantly recording and replaying these ambient sounds, the levitating sphere produces a delayed echo of human activity.
It’s equipped with a battery-powered Arduino — an Adafruit Wave Shield in order to record and playback audio on-the-fly through a small speaker. In the video below you can see how it moves around:
It actually reminds me of Rover, the large white inflatable balloon protagonist of the 60s sci-fi series the Prisoner! What do you think?
March 8th, 2014 at 12:06:21
Is this for real, I’m getting the creeps 😀 Totally Prisoner-material, good job!
March 8th, 2014 at 13:03:17
it would be interesting to explain how it floats and navigates!
March 8th, 2014 at 15:06:23
Well it must be helium in the ball. I liked that it recycled conversations from earlier. Specially in a closed environment like a elevator. I sure that there are things people will say in that situation that would not be said other wise. It acted like a identity absorbing all around it’s self. Socially a sponge of it’s surroundings. Great piece.
March 8th, 2014 at 18:31:36
I thought of rover first thing when I saw that
March 9th, 2014 at 13:30:00
Regarding floating+navigation i guess helium or hydrogen in the key to the former, and from the video i don’t get the idea that it’s navigating on it’s own, but a person brings it to a space and gives it a little tug to move until obstructed. Draft would guide it i guess, but eventually i bet it would end up in a corner or near a vent or something like that. Hmm maybe rotating around it’s own center would be a possibility for (random) movement, but i mechisms for that would add weight. Ideas, anyone?
March 9th, 2014 at 14:50:28
Does anybody how the shield was used for audio input? Also, where was the mike placed? This project is being discussed here too ->
http://arduino.stackexchange.com/q/674/65
March 10th, 2014 at 05:18:48
amaze-balls is all I can say
March 12th, 2014 at 00:38:41
Nothing I’ve read here or in other posts refers to any sort of proactive drive system – it’s a passive, neutral buoyancy floater that talks (pretty cool just for that). The rest is just careful video shoots in relatively confined airflows.
March 27th, 2014 at 13:25:43
Reminds me of that Phantasm movies…Scary stuff, probably the sphere form – nothing to make the eye hold on to, scares the viewer.