Beatboxing Beets and Radishes That Moan (Video)
“Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit,” starts the children’s schoolyard song. But two recent mergers of root crops and technology could upset the legume as the champion of musical foods that come out of the garden.
Scott Garner’s BeetBox is a simple electronic drum beat machine that uses beets in place of a machine’s buttons.
BeetBox uses six beets connected to capacitive touch sensors to play the drum beats samples on a Raspberry Pi, and an audio amplifier and handmade wooden enclosure he built himself.
Watch BeetBox in Action
BeetBox from Scott Garner on Vimeo.
The maker describes it as:
"BeetBox is primarily an exploration of perspective and expectations. I’m particularly interested in creating complex technical interactions in which the technology is invisible—both in the sense that the interaction is extremely simple and in the literal sense that no electronic components can be seen."
If you'd like to build your own BeetBox Scott has posted the information on internals and source code at his website.
The Sekuhara Interface translates to “Sexual Harassment Interface.” A number of daikon radishes are wired to electric sensors that emit erotic moans and groans when they are touched in any way. The audio is very much Not Safe For Work.
Watch (NSFW) Sekuhara Interface
Built by Etsuko Ichihara, a former student of Tokyo Waseda University’s digital media group, Rocket News 24 explains that the Sekuhara Interface was designed to make “thoughts, feelings and abstract concepts physical.” Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing points out that you can easily construct your own Sekuhara Interface at home using the Makey Makey Kit.
While these two projects serve no practical use in the garden, the ideas behind them have promise in making gardening appealing to an increasingly technologically savvy generations.
A school garden curriculum can be combined with math, technology, music, and art class where students work together. Some students can grow the vegetable interfaces while others program the devices, and others build together the components.
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