University of Texas Permian Basin Senior Learning Technology Analyst Curtis Rogers has a way for people to sing an object into existence using Minecraft and a 3-D printer.
Rogers said he’s had the devices for a long time, but finally decided to put it all together so it can be shared with other people and schools. UTPB Associate Professor of Art Chris Stanley posed the question of whether Rogers knew anything about assistive technology to help people who are quadriplegic create things.
He figured out that Minecraft could be used as a 3-D application. Senior Lecturer Doug Young programmed it.
“It turned out (in) the education version of Minecraft … there’s a special block in it that allows you export 3-D models in a file type that’s compatible with the printer. That was the next part of the puzzle was that we had the ability now to take and have the model built in Minecraft and export it in like a vegetable-based filament, which would then allow you to invest it and do bronze casting,” Rogers said.
At the time, he said, the only 3-D printer the university had was one that would just do regular filaments.
“We now have clay printing and some other things available to us,” Rogers said. “So that was the second iteration. So now we know what 3-D modeling application we can use because it’s quite simple. The instructions are easy and people are very familiar with Minecraft, so there are plenty of resources out there. At the end of the day, all we’re really doing is dropping blocks down. I built this world in Minecraft that only allows blocks to be built where we see these little brown boxes. The utility of that is this kind of box you see, this is the size that the 3-D printer will do. It’s the maximum size actually that this will output.”
Rogers said he taught music technology for a number of years at a college in New Mexico.
“I got to thinking music is one thing that’s really interesting because you have voice commands. We’re used to that in computing. You can tell the computer to do certain things. But one thing that voice commands don’t do a very good job of is they don’t have any duration. But music does have duration. So if I hold a note … I can continuously give commands just as though if I hold down this W key I can continuously instruct my character to move because it’s the equivalent as if I were to just keep pressing down,” he added.
“I was thinking, … what if we were to take a music tuner and make it where you hit a certain note, it sends a certain command to the computer. Chris liked the idea and it seemed like it would be a viable idea because that’s one thing you can do. If a person had no motor control at all; I only had control of my singing voice. I could sing an object into existence, basically. … I use the keyboard to do it, but I can use my voice, too. …,” Rogers said.
This will give a student a chance to build something they can bring home that maybe they haven’t been able to do before.
He added that it could also be used by music majors who want to work on their pitches.
“They can sing into this thing as well and build objects that way,” Rogers said.
He added that the other interesting thing is that you can disassemble something and turn it into music.
“I actually have the sheet music that built this mug. This mug was built with a voice,” Rogers said.
He said their intention is to share the Singing Potter Music Controlled 3-D Modeling with the Bynum School and other educational institutions.
“I’m pretty excited about doing this. This definitely gives people a new, you know, a new avenue of approach on certain things,” Rogers said.
