PIEZO DISCS

ABOVE: Piezo disc and an experimentation using foam board



Up until this point in my project i have been using earphones and foam padding to attempt to direct the sound through the wine glasses on the wall piece. This was proving difficult to acurately block the sound from coming from the back of the piece as i was trying to direct air vibrations. I was also haveing problems trying to get a hole through a wine glass to direct the sound through the piece. i have spent a few weeks with different setups trying to get around this vital problem. So i arranged a tutorial with one of my tutors peter appleton who has worked with technology within his own artwork, he has suggested i look at piezo discs or contact microphones.
A contact microphone, otherwise known as a pickup or a piezo, is a form of microphone designed to sense audio vibrations through solid objects. Unlike normal air microphones, contact mics act as transducers which pick up vibrations and convert them into a voltage which can then be made audible. This is something i will be experimenting with as the discs can be used as a mirophone, which could be used for picking up the wine glass sound from the sociable space without getting any other sound such as people talking, or it can be used as a speaker which when place on a hard surface will send the vibrations through whatever it is placed on therefore turning it into a speaker, im thinking of using this to solve my wall piece problem.

I will continue to play around with the setup and also begin playing around with the Piezo discs.