Current Exhibition

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Skitter Flutter
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger with Patrick Becker and Steve Ghertner
 
May 10 – June 27, 2013
 

Skitter Flutter is a reactive sound sculpture built with sensors, microcontrollers and motors.
 
A Raspberry Pi, webcam and light sensors take intentional and inadvertent input from those in the space – movement, sound, the casting of shadows – and feed that input to an Arduino microcontroller which in turn sparks the responsive mechanical soundscape.
 
“We are turning Seed Space into a sentient space that reacts to exploration with skitters and flutters of nearly invisible but audibly reactive objects.”
 
Skitter Flutter grew out of Hunsinger’s Duet for Arduino & Soprano Sax, which features her robotic drummer, created with an Arduino microcontroller, an ultrasonic sensor and a motor. It is also influenced by her years of early morning bird conservation work in the Chicago area. She is Founder of The Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, a program in which volunteers rescue injured and stunned migratory birds in the early morning hours.
 
“I became fascinated with the idea of creating an environment of reactive sounds, similar in some ways to small mammals, insects or birds, which would be heard but not seen. These creatures would react to our movements but stay hidden. ”
 
Her new work attempts to keep its secrets. Sounds pull the viewer in but then dissipate upon investigation, much as crickets grow quiet as we approach.
 
Hunsinger is excited to be working with Patrick Becker and Steve Ghertner, whom she met through the Middle Tennessee Robotic Arts Society, a free resource in Nashville for those interested in pursuing robotics, technology and programming.
 
“Skitter Flutter” project website
 
Facebook event page
 
 

Bios:
 
Robbie Lynn Hunsinger is a classical Oboist turned mult-instrumentalist, improvisor, multimedia artist and composer now working in custom computer code to create interactive multimedia compositions. Decades of performance include concerts with the Metropolitan Opera, The Atlanta Symphony and The Chicago Symphony and appearances at the Chicago Jazz Festival, The Chicago World Music Festival, the Asian American Jazz Festival, the FMP Festival in Chicago and the Empty Bottle Festival of Improvised Music. Her recordings include the Marlboro Festival recording of Schoenberg’s “Chamber Symphony No 1″ with Felix Galimir released as part of Marlboro’s 40th Anniversary Series, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Grammy Winner, “The Wooden Prince” by Bartok conducted by Pierre Boulez. Her multimedia installations have been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art and at Thomas Blackman Gallery in Chicago. Her compositions have been featured on the New Music Depaul Series and at the MiXing Festival. Her ensembles include Trio with Joseph Jarman and Tatsu Aoki, Rebar, Corvus and the Robbie Hunsinger Quartet.
 
Patrick Becker is a graduate of ITT Technical Institute with an associate’s degree in Computer Electronics Engineering Technology. Since childhood, he has been “making,” using toys such as Steel Tech and Legos as his first media. Patrick has a passion for building one of a kind gadgets, and joined the Middle TN Robotics Arts Society (MTRAS) in 2008. Patrick’s projects Pyro Jam Can, Turn an Old PC into a Working Aquarium, and other novel projects have been featured on several notable websites, including instructables.com, hack-a-day.com, and lifehacker.com.
 
Steve Ghertner has degrees in electrical engineering and business from University of Texas-Austin and Georgia Tech. He has been tearing apart, building and “making” since early childhood. He was an avid amateur radio operator (WD4CFN) during his youth and liked to build radio equipment. He designed manufacturing automation systems following college. He has a patent for a water saving device and enjoys building hobby robots and other assorted “maker’ projects. He is one of the first members of the Middle Tennessee Robotics Arts Society (MTRAS), and has gained some notoriety in the small but highly enthusiastic, chicken raising community for his internet connected coop.