Sonaqua goes to Biocultura

Last month…yes, blogging can be slow, I traveled to Santa Fe with the support of Andrea Polli and taught a workshop on my Sonaqua project.

The basic idea of Sonaqua is to sonfiy — create sounds — based on water quality. As a module, these are Arudino-based and designed for a single-user to make a sound. I’m actively teaching workshops on these and have open-sourced the software and made the hardware plans available.

interested in a Sonaqua workshop? then contact me

My Sonaqua installation creates orchestral arrangements of water samples based on electrical conductivity. Here’s a link to the video that explains the installation, which I did in Bangkok this June.

Back to New Mexico..In the early part of the week, I taught a workshop on the Sonaqua circuit at one of Andrea’s classes at UNM, creating single-player modules for each student. We collected water samples and played each one separately. The students were fun and set up this small example of water samples with progressive frequencies, almost like a scale.

The lower the pitch, the more polluted* the water sample and so higher-pitched samples might correspond to filtered drinking water.

Later in the week, I traveled to Biocultura in Santa Fe, which is a space that Andrea co-runs. Here, I installed the orchestral arrangement of the work, based on 12 water samples in New Mexico. She had a whole set of beakers and scientific-looking vessels, so I used what we had on hand and installed it on a shelf behind the presentation.

A physical map (hard to find!) of the sites where I took water samples.

And a close-up shot of one of the water samples + speakers. If you look closely, you can see an LED inside the water sample.

My face is obscured by the backlit screen. I presented my research with Sonaqua, as well as several other projects around water that evening to the Biocultura audience.

And afterwards, the attendees checked out the installation while I answered questions.