Field Poetry - an Environment-Responsive Sound Box
Max MSP Patch and Arduino Circuit Design/Making by Yifeng Yvonne Yuan
special thanks to Roger Lin for the acrylic board, hot glue gun and circuit demonstration.
Field Poetry is an interactive generative sound box that transforms environmental data into a living sonic experience. Inspired by the subtle interactions between nature and sound, the piece functions like a digital wind chime—an object that breathes with its surroundings and reflects the ever-shifting rhythms of the environment.
I live in Santa Barbara, California, a coastal town where the mountains rise to the left and the endless ocean stretches to the right. I was drawn to the poetics of nature—the wind patterns, the fluctuating humidity after rainfall, and the subtle shifts in light and warmth. Field Poetry captures these nuances, transforming real-time environmental data into an evolving soundscape.
The core of Field Poetry consists of a custom-built soundbox embedded with an Arduino Uno and sensors that collect real-time environmental data:
Microphone: Captures ambient sound from the surrounding environment.
Light Sensor: Measures light intensity and affects the brightness or frequency band of a bandpass filter.
Temperature Sensor: Maps to the overall clock, influencing the density of sonic events.
Humidity Sensor: Controls the delay time of sine tones and overall reverb effects.
It also has a loop function building in.
All collected data is processed in real-time using Max/MSP, with custom patches designed to map environmental variables directly to sonic parameters such as pitch, timbre, duration, and spatialization.