TGC3 Beginners Guide

Intro

The Tetra Gamma Circulaire 3 (TGC3), AKA XPUB Special Issue 2, is an unknown concrete floppy music publication. It is an experimental platform designed to investigate experimental ways of publishing sonic, visual and textual works and instruments.

This work is a collaboration between the polymorph production platform DE PLAYER and the Experimental Publishing (XPUB) study path of the Media Design Master at the Piet Zwart Institute, Willem de Kooning Academie. Current contributions include works on dance, democracy, drones, surveillance, body movement, silence, improvisation, and the fine line between everything and nothing. We encourage anyone to contribute new pieces so as to develop an ever growing library of works to be experienced on the TGC3.

Hardware

The TCG3 is an accumulation of various computer peripherals that can be accessed in many different ways (WiFi, speakers, microphone, camera, Bluetooth, electro-conductive touch pads). It was designed as an open platform to allow for many kinds of applications, and contributions.

The core of the TGC3 is a single board computer (SBC) called a RaspberryPi and running the GNU/Linux distribution Raspbian. Works are contained on floppy disks and launched on insertion. To be more precise, each floppy contains the programmatic instructions so as to make the tiny computer behave in a certain way, and make use of some of all of its peripherals. This system therefore allows for a rather large range of possibilities, where the TGC can become anything from an audiovisual noise instrument to a poetry broadcasting device or spying and tracking camera. Last but not least, there is no default Internet connectivity on the TGC3, but local websites, stored on each floppy, can be accessed by connecting to the TGC3 local WiFi hotspot. This feature can be used to provide contextual documentation for the work, or publish browser-based art off the Internet.

Software

Contributions can be made in the form of python code, pure data patches, javascript and websites. Access to the various hardware peripherals can be made using standard Raspberry Pi libraries. Interactivity can be manipulated via the microphone, camera, electro-conductive touch pads, and/or web interface. Outputs can come in the form of, audio via the speakers, or visually from the web server.

Floppy

The setup of the Floppy is key in the functionality of the system. Below we have provided a map of the file and folder structure of your future floppy submission.

FLOPPY
├── LICENSE
├── main.pd
├── main.py
├── noweb
│   └── index.html
└── README

In the root of the Floppy disk there needs to contain a LICENSE and README text file, your initial code file(s) named either main.py or main.pd format, and a noweb folder containing local website files you wish to have accessible over the local hotspot. Any other files you may need can be arranged in any style you choose so long as you correctly reference them in your code.