A Protein Based Bioelectronic Musical Instrument

[Josiah Zayner]

Hey all,
     I am a Ph.D. student(hopefully I will have my Ph.D. in the next few months, YIKES!) in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Chicago. In my free time separate from my Ph.D. I have been working on the interaction of biologicals with electronics. My first attempt is a protein based musical instrument I have called The Chromochord. Using light one can create a two-way interaction with a photoactive protein by exciting it and measuring it's response. I have also been working with a composer, Francisco Castillo Trigueros, to develop some cool music for it. Thought you all might be interested in the project. Alot more details including videos and pictures are on the webpage below or feel free to ask me anything.

http://doitourselfscience.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-chromochord-details.html

Thanks,
     Josiah Zayner

[Nathan McCorkle]

Throw it in a box with a foot pedal and some phono jacks and market it
to guitar rock dudes as 'The Protein Pedal'... 'Pulling the Awesome
sound of Proteins into your Jams'

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-Nathan

[Josiah Zayner]

I am trying to develop something with membrane proteins and bacteria so people can have a live acoustic response from an organism. But "Putting the sound of proteins into your jams." sounds alot better than "Putting the sound of Bacteria into your jams". hah

[Enrico]

that's a really curious and interesting idea! id like to listen how a protein sounds like :D

[Jonathan Cline]

Very cool, I have some comments for you.
Could you post the source and part number for the LED you are using, since you've found a good source of 460 nm illumination, or at least, a source which allows for OK calibration.
If you are using photoresistors then you should know that they can drift and are not precise.  So you would have to tune each one.
I wonder if you've listened to any of the fractal/chaos mathematics-driven music algorithms which were the nerdy-rage some time ago.  Lots of interesting ideas though in the end the product typically sounded like junk.  It would seem that a better approach is somehow keying arpeggios rather than individual notes.
 
 
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[Josiah Zayner]

Yes, that is exactly what the new version talked about on the blog does it uses custom musical phrases composed of a number of partial harmonics. These of course were created by the composer Francisco Castillo Trigueros. I am not a huge music buff.

Yes, I know photoresistors suck(bad choice by me) and the code written for the arduino goes through much effort to filter, baseline and produce halfway usable measurements from each photoresistor. Everytime the instrument is turned on it goes through a long calibration process that also takes into account the photocycling of the protein.

The LEDs I purchased off of eBay from China but similar ones can easily be found on Digikey or your favorite site just search for blue LEDs (http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/optoelectronics/led-lighting-color/525607?k=blue%20led)

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[Jonathan Cline]

On Saturday, June 8, 2013 2:53:09 PM UTC-7, Josiah Zayner wrote:

The LEDs I purchased off of eBay from China but similar ones can easily be found on Digikey or your favorite site just search for blue LEDs (http://www.digikey.com/product-search/en/optoelectronics/led-lighting-color/525607?k=blue%20led)

I know.  The important part is to document the parts you used to yield the response you are measuring with those parts.  Then if someone else uses different LEDs, a comparison can be made.  Differences include lens angle, emission spectrum, cost, current requirement, output intensity, etc.   With the several colorimetric projects around, everyone chooses different parts and thus results vary.  Better to eliminate that variation or at least relate it to the results, to make some progress on improving subsequent open designs.  Not sure if you did any comparisons of different emitter-detector combinations, most projects undergo a new comparison every time, which is just re-inventing the wheel.