MDDN 314: Situational Sounds

In order to assemble the soundscape that I want, I needed to first decide on what it would be. The brief was fairly open, allowing for a fair bit of playing around in terms of what we wanted to do. The first thing that I decided was that I wanted to do something a bit different. I wanted to take this project somewhere where you can't go in real life. I wanted to create a space for the future. One space that I've enjoyed on the odd occasion in Wellington has been the railway station, so I decided to do a futuristic railway station. 

Erm. Excuse my French, I actually mean The HyperTrain Transit Station. Much better. This station will feature a range of things, as I decided one late afternoon that I really needed to plan out everything I wanted in my soundscape. This involved actually thinking of all the layers of sound that exist in a futuristic train station. And when you start thinking about all the sounds involved, that number gets pretty large.

After writing that list and figuring out which sounds I would need to make personally and which sounds I could record, I took a trip over to the train station, and did some field recordings there. All of the sounds that I got there will make up the bulk of the "background ambience" of the HTTS. Once I returned, I got into making my own sounds. This proved to be a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed just playing around with the effects and with the way I could create different noises.


One of the first elements I gave work was the advertisements. I see the future as being very invasive in the way that ads get used. This is evidenced in all sorts of movies, such as Blade Runner and The Minority Report. I wanted to recreate this feeling of the advertisements being everywhere.

Advertisements regarding off-world expansion seemed to be a must have, as well as to create an obligatory Blade Runner reference.

One aspect of the world that I wanted to create was this notion of Synthetics (androids) being seen in a bad light. One of the ads that I made references the idea that Synthetics were developed to be slaves, but developed true sentience and could no longer be slaves.

Creating futuristic car noises was so much fun. I really enjoyed the creation of an endless volley of different-but-similar sounds. That, and it's just really fun to say Niiiiiiiaaaaaaaooooooooommmmm.

This is a noise that I generated and manipulated heavily in Audacity. Originally generated as noise, I then overlaid several frequencies onto it, to give it a metallic vent drone, as if it were the sound of a train idling or an air conditioning unit.

INDN 341: Refining The Method Of Creation

After a talk with my lecturer, my ideas have taken an entirely different turn. One of the ideas that got thrown around was the concept of cataloguing people, as opposed to objects. This concept was suggested as a lead into doing a fully fledged installation piece.

This idea then evolved into the concept of cataloguing people's heads and making that the installation. I took this idea and then went another step further. I loved the concept of Candy Chang's "A Confession" installation, and I wanted to build on that idea a little. I want to tackle the concept of anonymity and how it affords us the ability to say the way we feel without any constraints.

Image acquired from: http://candychang.com/confessions/

Using the previous concept of cataloguing people, I want to take my prior idea with how the device catalogues people's heads and combine it with the notion of a confession. The way I see the project happening is that the person has their head catalogued and then proceed to write a confession onto the card that their head was projected onto. The outline of the head, created through the use of a pressurised spray of water, is very vague, eliminating the possibility of the person being recognised.

The entire process is a little jumbled at the moment, but I think getting my ideas out onto the blog should clear it up a little bit in my head. The ideas behind this project are heavily linked to the notion of baptism and rebirth. By admitting your "confession" and being "catalogued" in an exhibited way, I see this as being a way of confessing to your self and the world. The confessions need not be bad, in fact, a lot of them could be really good!

In terms of physical form, I really wanted to juxtapose the idea of execution as well as the baptism, so I had the idea of linking the two through the physical form. That's where the idea of the execution block comes from.

INDN 341: 3D Into 2D

So I've been doing a lot of thinking with respect to the project and how I'm going to make the interpretation of it clearly show what it's going to achieve. Another aspect that I really want to look at is the concept of the user interaction. This is a very important part of the machine as it's what the entire process is founded on.

The interaction is something that I want to consider quite heavily. Since I'm looking at the process of movement and getting the user to manipulate the fabric to generate something unique every time, it seems prudent to ensure I've designed a system that allows a certain effective method of control. One difficulty I've had is to decide whether to make a system that is fully automatically controlled, or a system that requires constant user input. These two options could both create quite a poetic object.

To allow the user interaction, I have to make sure that the design of the components  makes sense to people, as well as being easy to see and comfortable to use as well. The way I can see the fabric suspension working is as such: Multiples parts of the fabric are attached to small wheels, allowing them to be moved closer to one the three struts. Using the three sides to control the angles and locations of different points of the fabric allows the user to manipulate the resultant shapes that the trickling watercolours create below.

Using just straight connectors between the different struts would create issues though, as the angle of the connecting wire coming off the wheels would be slightly off what it possibly should be to ensure the best possible functionality. By bending the connecting struts, it alters the angle to be facing slightly more towards the center, which will make the connections to the fabric less strenuous and more direct.

In terms of other options for making the wheels function appropriately, another two options would be to have the wheel function off a small ratchet, and another option would be to have sort of "brake pads" that keep the spinning of the wheel in check. This natural inhibitor would allow for the user to manipulate the cable while on it's own it won't be able to move.

After talking to the tutor today, I narrowed down my idea a fair bit, and decided to break away from the fabric idea a bit. As opposed to letting the user dictate how the result would be, I decided to go down the path of object cataloguing, whereby the user would place an object, and said object would then be "catalogued". The way I conceived this cataloguing would be for it to have quite a simple form, allowing for a very visible structure of how it functions. I want to highligh exactly how the device turns data from 3D into 2D.

This particular sketch details the concept of that idea, which would allow for the user to place an object of their choosing in the receptacle below. The beauty of this design is in the visibility, I feel. By making it incredibly clear how the whole device works, the user can feel more connected to the process as a whole. This utilisation of a clear-cut machine should allow the user to feel more connected to the creative process as a whole.

INDN 311: Competition Worries

So, I've had a wee bit of doubt over the past few days with respect to my alarm clock project, due mostly to the fact that I'm concerned about the competition that's out there, as well as trouble with expressing my form as something that could be new and interesting, without being just another lit wooden object that looks the same as so many things out there, even though I totally dig that look.

So I decided to take a few steps back. I want to create something that people can primarily enjoy the function of. I want it to be something beautiful, something that people can enjoy the look and style of. But, most importantly, I want the product to be something that people can trust to get them up in the morning. Our lecturer speaks a lot about the emotional importance of the designed objects, and how people connect with them emotionally and the emotions that the object can invoke in people.

So, the first thing I tried to do was take a step away from the traditional alarm clock, in both form and function. Perhaps the item that I wanted to create fulfilled more functions than just waking you up? Perhaps it also provided ambient lighting for your room, lighting that changed based on the time of day that it was. Basically one idea was a giant F.lux program, but FOR YOUR ROOM. Pretty sweet, huh?

Well then I decided maybe I should gravitate away from normal forms entirely, and try out some forms that were a bit less standard. I considered referencing the day/night cycle in an arching form, or reflecting the sun in the form of a globe shape that illuminated. One idea that's really stuck with me is the idea of something that projects a show onto the ceiling for the user to go to sleep to. Perhaps a miniature projector?

This then led me to consider the way that the mobile phone illuminates the room when it's placed on it's back. I love the way the quite directed display can create quite an ethereal light in the room, with a bit of care in terms of what happens on the screen itself. One idea that I liked was to experiment with the existing technology to integrate support and functionality from something that a lot of us have already, a smart phone.

The colours and shapes can be quite vague, but they are sort of distinguishable, which I really like. An idea I had with regards to that concept was the idea of projecting the light from the phone through moving water, which could give it a really nice quality on the roof. More experimentation with this is required though, as I have yet to see if a slightly broader light source has a different impact to a pinpoint light source.