This piece is located in a Tisch stairwell, building off Tiri’s 17 Tones prototype. It’s is composed of a continuous rotation servo motor which turns at a speed based on the input from a photo resistor. Two strands of wire are attached to the motor which hit a hanging chime as they are spun around. The photo resistor is taking light input from the fluorescent fixture directly above it. This fixture uses a PIR sensor to detect a person’s presence in the stairwell and responds by raising its brightness.

This piece utilizes the existing visual response system to generate an aural response in addition.

What’s interesting about watching this thing work is how jittery the servo is — it almost has a mind of its own. When the stairwell’s light dims, the servo slows to a crawl and ends up pulling the chime off the wall and dropping it back. When this happens you can hear the motor’s jittering buzz and the chime dinging as it’s pushed around.