Chatterbox [2021]

Chatterbox is an interactive audio-visual installation that allows the public to ‘play’ a bespoke sculptural instrument by approaching and moving their bodies nearby the human-sized sculptural form. The Chatterbox sound world consists of abstract speech-like utterances that vary from ‘calls’ to ‘whispers’ according to the participant’s distance from the instrument. Electronically controlled illumination acts in concert with the sounds to produce audiovisual behaviours. Drawing on a century-long tradition of interactive sonic devices, starting with the Theremin and Russolo noise machines in the early 1900s, Chatterbox reimagines these gestural-mechanical experiences as public art for a new century using digital electronics and renewable power. More information here.

Chatterbox was designed and built by Andrew R. Brown, Daniel Della-Bosca, John Ferguson, David Harris, Timothy Tate and Jason Nelson.

My work on Chatterbox included the design and fabrication of bespoke PCB boards that tied together PIR sensors, Neopixels and Amplifier boards. A video below shows it ‘in situ’.