earthseed processing
overview
serial bridge and audio playback system for dre jácome's earthseed installation, the code was edited/built during my internship at nyu idm. earthseed encodes oral history interviews into seed-like sculptures you touch to hear stories. capacitive sensors on three seedpods talk to an arduino over usb, a node.js server relays touch events to a p5.js page in the browser, and the browser plays the right story audio. i wrote the firmware, web bridge, and raspberry pi deployment for the latest iteration, part of dre's ongoing work as an eyebeam speculating on plurality resident.
features
- touch a seed, hear a story: each of three sensors cycles through its own set of oral history recordings
- arduino to node to p5.js pipeline over serial and websockets
- touching a new seed while audio is playing stops the current story and starts the next one immediately
- ambient crickets loop runs underneath story playback
- raspberry pi autostart so the installation boots into the browser on its own after power cycles
technical details
- arduino firmware (
earthseed-arduino.ino) reads capacitive touch on three seed sensors - node.js/express server bridges serial input from
/dev/ttyACM0(or configurable viaSERIAL_PATH) to the browser - p5.js frontend at
/p5/yes-bridge.htmlhandles audio playback and sensor routing - nine story files (
seedaudio1.mp3throughseedaudio9.mp3), three per sensor, plus backgroundcrickets.mp3 - systemd service (
earthseed-web.service) and chromium autostart script for headless raspberry pi installs - built for dre jácome's earthseed 3.0 iteration ahead of a fall 2026 exhibition at flux factory
related work
read dre's interview about the earthseed project at eyebeam.org/with-dre-jacome.