Drift
The white noise machine rebuilt as kinetic sculpture — brass tubes, servos and an Arduino drifting from noise toward indeterminate musical pattern.
Kinetic sound sculpture — wood, tuned brass tubes, servo motors, Arduino
With Tim Murray
Research
- GrantFaculty Research Initiative Grant, Dakota State University, 2025–26 ($5,000)
- TalkWork-in-progress presentation, DSU Research Week, March 2026
A white noise machine is designed to be ignored. Drift rebuilds one as a kinetic sculpture, something to listen to instead. Each sculpture is built from wood, tuned brass tubes, servo motors, and an Arduino microcontroller, and slowly shifts from noise toward indeterminate musical patterns.
What do we lose when we control our soundscape? Drift treats noise as material to compose with rather than something to engineer away.
Sound design and programming by Tate Carson; structural design and fabrication by Tim Murray. Supported by a Faculty Research Initiative Grant from Dakota State University.
One sculpture is complete, with four progressively smaller pieces planned. The work will be presented at DSU Research Week in Madison, South Dakota.
Design studies
Mechanism and blueprint studies for the bell assemblies are kept separately in drift-bell-models — seven chime mechanisms built from the same budget of one DC motor, three servos and six brass tubes, with the two selected for build drawn up in full.