Drawing notes with water

Aaron ALAI’s interactive sound piece, titled Stochasticity, explores the contrasrt of imprecise human behavior against rigid techological systems – and it looks like fun too.

When someone uses my art piece they are directly interacting with a very precise electronic tool. It produces musical tones based on the amount of resistance sensed in trails of water. The resistance changes unpredictably, and thus this is where the variability in the system arises from. The water evaporates, the user will flex their muscles, their hearts will pump blood at varying rates, and the conductivity of their skin will change. All of these variables change the placement of the notes in the water and make the system unreliable. I found it interesting that even though imperfect animals such as ourselves are plagued with randomness, we are capable of producing reliable highly precise tools that we can indirectly interact with.

More info available on Aaron’s site.