Epic Jefferson

14 Jan 2015

I’m mostly interested in creative sound experiments and applications.

In Puerto Rico, I founded The A/V Machinist Collective, a platform for presenting experimental works that involved the use and/or manipulation of technology. Since March 2013, I’ve co-directed the LED (Lab for Erroneous Design) which is the first attempt at establishing an art hackerspace in Puerto Rico.

Meta-Piano Extendido (2013)

The Meta-Piano Extended is a multimedia and interactive project of sonic character. There are 3 possibilities of interaction: physical contact, the interpretation of text and the manifestation of a programmed algorithm. This project, conceptualized by Epic Jefferson and Themis Cádiz, was the winner of the Lexus Grant for Emerging Artists in Puerto Rico in 2012.

The piano is physically reconstructed using local materials and makes use of accessible micro-controllers (Arduino), custom circuits, electro-mechanical components and the programming of a control system, which permits access over the internet. The teams’ skills span the fields of Sound Art, Electrical Engineering, Systems Programming, Carpentry, Digital Fabrication, Design and Physical Computing.

Successful

I really love how the project turned out technically & aesthetically, and the physical interaction was great, it’s super fun to play (almost no latency)! The team that worked on this project was pretty large, 7 people, and managing everyone’s work load and schedule was something that I didn’t count on. Luckily, everyone was great at their job and was highly motivated. The only reason this project was completed was thanks to these people.

Unsuccessful

  1. This project was installed in the Museum of Puerto Rico, the island’s premier museum. And it was meant to broadcast audio online through the website, but the museum’s IT guy refused to provide me with an ethernet connection! So I did everything I could to work around that situation (getting my private ISP, wireless routers and extenders) but the result was a faulty connection that caused the entire system to crash when the connection was broken for too long and the audio stream was terribly unstable.
  2. The system was originally set up so the piano would play itself every… 5… minutes… What a mistake! This caused the solenoids to fatigue in about 3 weeks and after that it was Maintenance City.
  3. DOCUMENTATION, I failed so miserably at documenting this project. So embarrassing. I really need to improve on that.