Lux Vocis: A Laser Drawing Machine

Lux Vocis is an interactive installation piece that draws laser portraits of a participant’s voice.  Check out this demo at the ITP 2009 Winter Show:

The machine utilizes two hacked hard drives, a method originally inspired by this hard-drive laser oscilloscope.  The drives are fed by a 30W stereo amp kit, into which is fed a stereo sound signal generated in Puredata.

Lux Vocis works like so: a user speaks into a microphone and my puredata patch picks out the most commonly recurring spectral peaks of the voice.  These frequencies are then used as seeds for a Lissajous figure, which is then drawn on the surface by oscillating the two mirrors attached to the hard drive voice coils.

Here’s another informative video:

And some selected drawings: