There are Five Main Components:

Potentiometers:The potentiometers control the amplitude and frequency of each speaker(four in total). Anyone interacting with the nox can toggle these knobs to create a different curve projection. 

Mirrors + Speakers: The mirrors and speakers are the bread and butter of this object so to speak. There are two speakers each with a mirror afixed to it on cardboard such that in vibrates in only one direction when audio plays(x and y/horizontal and vertical respectively). This is case such that when a laser is reflected off both mirrors, it can create an projection with both x and y points of movement, helping to create the Lissajous curves(each and x and y point representing a parametric curve). Here is a wiki article with some more general information about the math behind this phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve. The mirrors are set up in the box with putty and fixed to a moving plate such that the angles and positioning can be adjusted to focus the laser in any space. 

Laser: The laser is a fairly straightforward component. Its a 5V laser plugged into Edison Wall Power that remains constantly on. The Laser is focused to bounce off the speakers to project in front of the box in a ideally 45°-45° angle set up(though it varies on the space and throw distance to account for ratios and inverse square law). 

Code + Amplifier: The code has two components, the Arduino code, which reads the potentiometers and sends the data to p5js, and p5js, which parses the Arudino information and assigns frequency and amplitude values to the amplifier, which runs to the speaker. Within the p5js code, there are oscillators built with a frequency, amplitude, and phase control to each speaker. The phase control was omitted from the potentiometers for ease and accessibility to people who interact with the object(6 potentiometers felt a bit intimidated and excessive as opposed to four). Thus the potentiometer values, inputed from the arudino micro + code in the object/computer, gives frequency and amplitude speaker which is bracketed out appropriately to each speaker. 

Box assembly: The box itself has brown/marone finish to mimic a old style wooden box. The potentiometer knobs are start white and were 3D printed from a previous stl model that had a vintage style customixable knob. The box itself is meant to feel old, and not at all modern/technological to give the illusion of the analog nature of the project + the age of the Lissajous experiment/style of mathematics. The front of the box is a curved opening to alow for the laser to project forward in front of the box. 

This process was quite fulfilling in all honesty. 

This project was a challenged in many retrospects. The sound component was very foreign to me and certified non-sound person. The laser felt the only familiar part in a funny way.

But this project challenged my scope of what I knew, and made more confident in building objects I thought I couldn't before. The ideation process took so long to get here it felt like I was behind a bit at the start. But I pulled through. SPecial shout out to Zach and Petra for the insane amount of support to build this. 

I'm pretty proud of this project, which is a sharp contrast from my gates project, which I felt a bit disappointed in. And this project felt more fun, less serious, and dispelled any notion that I needed a super deep metaphor to create an object. To create anything, even to bring joy, is something I can do and it can still be valid. 

Hopefully, this outcome leads me to take steps outside of my normal medium of art and fuse more ideas together. Afterall I am an interdisciplinary major, it does seem apt.

Signing off

-Sunaina

Arduino: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M5lf6NC9ZbJiaEHWBKiulpb7TW9FHCNAKtPh4hlPk3k/edit?tab=t.0

p5js: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OJo_LlvwQOFWytS_ryCJRyB12WqHWKhT1KaSVzeREeQ/edit?tab=t.0