Emergency entrance / rain receiver 🌧️

Have you tried to archive the nature? The rain, or the wind. How do you interact with these non-human being things? And archive the nature’s language?

If we asking you to interviewing the rain or the wind, what question do you have?

Please write down on the paper, let the rain drop on the paper, wet out the the ink on the paper.

With the rain receiver, we generate sound by receiving the frequency of the rain, to analyse the language of the nature.

This is a special talking between the rain and us, We will use the sound and paper, ink blot to archive.

In a post-apocalyptic world, natural archiving becomes a guide. Human beings follow the guidance and are connected together by natural archiving.

WORM, a place where survivors gather in the apocalyptic, the Rain Receiver becomes a symbolic nexus of human and natural elements within this community, where humans and nature no longer have the commodity attributes of a one-directional society, and where the emotional link becomes an important medium for constructing a sense of belonging.

Through the Rain Receiver, we analyze the language of nature by receiving the frequency of rain to generate sounds. As survivors touch the Rain Receiver, they become part of the ongoing narrative. The act of touching the receiver is an intimate gesture, akin to the act of giving. This interaction triggers a cascade of experiences – the sound of rain, snippets of stories, and stream-of-consciousness memories collected from the community.

Soundscape - Archive Unzipped

It's all began with the picnic box.

While discussing items for our picnic, I considered the need for an umbrella given the unpredictable weather in the Netherlands.

At that point I was thinking what if the umbrella could be more than just a shield from the rain? What if it could become a receiver, to catch the rain and convert the rain as a signal to archive the nature, the non human being things.

I attend a lot station skills during the November, which helped me a lot to get the inspirations step by step.(Wood station skills and Station skills “about energy: solar/wind/joule thief”), with the Arduino station skills it helped me to realise the idea eventually.

Max/msp

I use the Max/msp mainly in this project, the initial logic is receiving electric values from the Arduino and then converting these values/numbers into MIDI notes.

Arduino part

Arduino receives electric values and sends these four numbers to four signal channels in Max. Additionally, these values are sent to the CGI to provide numbers for the printer to print.

Midi notes filter

A MIDI filter receives the numbers and converts them into notes. With a filter, it removes notes that are not in harmony. Only notes within the harmonic range are sent to the MIDI note receiver.

Mapping

These four numbers are also received by a mapping Max plugin. The numbers from the Arduino are mapped to effect functions, such as the feedback, reverb size, and harmonics values.

Rain Archive

Using a CGI page on ChopChop, we connected the printer with the rain receiver. We used a "/" to represent the raindrops that we received and randomly picked words from our EtherPad. With the first word "fear" came out from the printer, we collected all the raindrops and compiled them into a publication.