In order to create a truly successful interactive installation, one needs to consider the emotional effect that the piece may have, a truly successful designer would design the piece to create a specific emotional environment. For my project, the intention is to generate feelings of joy as well as staving to create a form of trust between the controller and the participant. The best way to achieve this goal is to incorporate a level of Gamification within the piece, creating a goal to be reached within the piece, while also providing positive feedback for a successful run, and providing negative feedback for a fail state. By doing this, the piece starts to become a game and attracts people to use it in its intended way.
Gamification
In essence, Gamification is the process of adding game-design elements to non-game contexts in order to improve user engagement and in a way, make theses contexts more fun to use or interact with. The concept itself is closely related to the field of video games, this is because video games are extremely engaging thus, one should be able to utilize some elements from game design in order to craft a more engaging context for things outside of video gaming. When incorporating gamification into a project one can start by identifying the three elements that a gamified system must engage, the motivation to do an action, the ability to carry out the action, and a trigger to complete the action. Certain motivators can be used to help reinforce these elements, motivators such as: rewards, loss aversion, status, competition, reputation, and feedback.
Trust
Another key aspect of my design is the idea of trust between participants. In many ways, trust is the most successful form of understanding between people, if you can rely on other people this means that you have a deeper understanding of those people. This concept plays a large role in businesses and workplaces as a means of creating a more efficient and pleasant working environment. There are certain activities that these companies use in order to build trust within their workers, my intention is to include aspects of theses exercises within my piece in order to create a feeling of trust between the participants. One of these exercises is called “Minefield”, in this exercise a field of obstacles is layer out and one participant is tasked with walking through this course while blindfolded, the role of the other participants is to lead this person through the course verbally. By doing this, the blindfolded participant must rely on the other participants in order to succeed.
In doing research for assignment 4, I came across a few projects that were quite inspirational. I’m going to go into some detail on them to explain why they may become useful to me while I continue working on this project.
Project 1:
White Noise White Light - Höweler + Yoon
This project consists of a 50′ x 50′ field of fiber optic lights as well as speakers. The intention of the design is to respond to the movement of people through the space. At first glance it appears to be a static field of lights, once people start to move through it, the appearance begins to change as the fiber optics move around and make light trails through the sky. Alongside the movement of the lights, each node has a speaker which plays white noise when interacted with. The combination of both of these elements makes a dynamic environment that changes based on the amount of people as well as the type of movement within the space.
Project 2:
Dune - Studio Roosegaarde
This project similarly consists of a field of lights which are designed to be interacted with. The difference is that these are designed to be placed along existing paths and corridors, attempting to have a dialogue with nature and context. Through a combination of lights and soft sounds, this project creates a certain emotional atmosphere, a certain serenity and peacefulness. When creating a project so ingrained with the human experience, one needs to be aware of the emotional quality that is created and the emotional quality that they intended to create.
The main crux of my project is the process of audio visualization. By utilizing audio visualization form multiple points within an urban environment while also displaying each location in conjunction with one another. By placing monitoring stations at multiple points in a city, each with its own specific audio signature the display will provide viewers with an understanding of the sound quality of the environment that they are in as well as the sound quality of the rest of the city.
Context
The premise is to place the monitoring stations and displays in multiple area within a city, each with differing audio qualities. This could mean that they could be placed at high and low density streets, public park spaces and open spaces, even within interiors of transit hubs or commercial buildings.
These locations would be decided by referencing noise density maps of the city, allowing for the systems to be placed at the most effective locations in terms of providing the greatest possible comparison and understanding of the sound landscape of the city.
Visualization
The choice to display audio in the form of a graph came both from technical considerations as well as from the desire to make the display as simple and understandable as possible. By being able to picture the sound as a graph as well as be listening to the sound, I feel that a comprehension is achieved. With this comprehension, one can start to imagine the sound quality of other locations by viewing the graphs created by those sounds.
The main feature of my project is the concept of audio visualization. There are many ways to go about the process of visualizing audio, so I feel that its important to understand them, therefore one can choose to most successful method.
Audio Equalization
One of the most common types of audio visualization is the equalizer. This type of visualization comes as a result of a tool used in music production. The basic premise is to take in the frequency of sound and separate it into linear “bands’. The purpose being to adjust the amplitude of audio signals at particular frequencies.
Spectrogram
The spectrogram is a visual representation of the range of frequencies of a signal as it varies over time. This mostly takes the form of a graph with two axis, one representing time with the other representing frequency, the third measured dimension of amplitude is represented by the color of the graph. This description is rather loose, meaning that by just changing the axis or using either 2D or 3D display has the potential to change the representation in many ways.
Milkdrop
Milkdrop is a program that creates a constantly shifting visual environment that reacts to audio input by utilizing beat detection and interpellation. By cycling through multiple presets, the environment created is always in a state of flux.
In doing research for the start of this assignment, I've come across a few examples that I feel might be of some use. In this post I will go into detail on some of them.
Project 1: Reactive Sparks
This is a project located in Germany, it consists of a series of screens situated along a popular roadway. By using camera tracking, the screens are able to display the movement energy of passing cars visually as horizontal lines on the screen. As the car moves past it individually triggers each screen in sequence. The light produced by the strips is dependent on the amount of cars on the road, meaning that early mornings with minimal traffic will produce a dim light, while the high traffic of the afternoon and night will produce a bright light.
Project 2: In Order to Control
This project consists of two parts, a projection on the ground which is meant to be interrupted by the participants, and a projection on the wall that displays the interruption of the participants. The projection takes the form of a series of text that is a discussion of ethics and morality. This allows it to combine an interactive experience with a deeper understanding of the meaning behind the art.
Project 3: Natures Rhythm
This project is part of a larger installation called the Digital Light Canvas, which is a large scale screen and sculptural piece situated within a public space. This projects consists of a collection of lights acting as if they are fluid, these lights can be impacted by the movement of the people through the space. This movement is also translated to the hanging sculptural piece in the form of color changing lights, this provides opportunities for people adjacent to the space to read the movement of people moving through the space.
How can people have an impact on the spaces which they inhabit? This is the question that I wanted to ask with this assignment. By creating a means of interaction with the people in the space, my project intends to essentially count the amount of people in a space, which could then be translated into a change in the environment. That change could be physical or ephemeral, or maybe even emotional. In this case, I wanted this change to be auditory.
Step 1: Switch and Relay
What do people do in a space and how can we use this as an input? I was working with the assumption that people will want to sit when they’re in this space, I think that’s a pretty safe bet, I know that I like to sit sometimes, The question then becomes, how do we record this input? The switch and relay that i designed would utilize the pressure created by the action of sitting, basically the seat would compress as a result of sitting, this compression would be translated via a plunger which would attach to a lever. When the input moves down the output will move up.
Step 2: Logic Gates
Now that we have an output, we need a way to combine a multitude of these outputs to produce specific results, this is where the gates come in. The first gate on the chopping block is the AND gate, a gate where and output is only created when both the inputs are 1. My and gate uses a similar system to the relay, utilizing a lever, this lever can rotate based on the inputs, but if both are 1 then the lever will move upwards on a track which would then create the desired result.
The next gate on deck is the OR gate, wherein an output of 1 is created if any or both of the inputs are 1. My OR gate uses a bar on tracks with inputs on both sides. As one input moves upward, the bar moves along with it, this works for either side and it will also function with both sides activated.
The final gate I designed was the XOR gate, where the output is 1 if any of the inputs are 1 but the output is 0 when both inputs are one. The XOR gate is an essential piece in a binary adder which is why I decided to design one, in hindsight this may have been a fruitless endeavor seeing that an adder isn't specifically necessary for what I was trying to see, nevertheless I designed one. The concept works as a combination of the two previous gates, the two inputs are attached to a bar with rotating joints, this means that one positive input would result in the bar rotating, but with two positive inputs the bar moves upward rather than rotating. This bar is designed to interact with another bar situated above it which controls the output, So by having the input bar rotate, the ends will start to push the output bar upward. The space between the bars is specified so that if the bar moves upward without rotation it will not interact with the output bar, instead stopping just below therefore not activating the output.
Step 3: Changing the Space
My intention with this project is to use the amount of people to effect a change in the auditory condition of the space The way I imagined this happening was that the inputs of people would interact with a wind organ by opening and closing valves to allow or prohibit air flow. In all honesty this ended up being rather weak and unresolved, the mechanisms I designed did not effectively interact with this system. If I were to move forward with this project I would definitely try and dive deeper into how these systems can interact and what they can interact with in order to achieve my goal.
I’ve set the goal of this piece as counting the people existing in a space. The intention being that the people would provide the input of the device simply by sitting or standing in the space. The device would then take these inputs into account and add them all together, which would subsequently produce a result specific to the amount. This result may have a visual representation or an auditory representation.
Switch
The fist step in the design process is to create the switch which will respond to the presence of a human. The switch I designed responds to pressure exerted by the weight of the person. A plate would that can either be sat upon or stood upon would be connected to a spring and plunger system which would move in the vertical direction. The system at rest would be in the up position, this would qualify as the 0, the system, when acted upon, would be in the down position, this would qualify as the 1.
Relay
The next step would be to incorporate the switch into a relay. The relay I designed would use a lever. The switch would provide the input to one side, while the other side would be connected to another plunger. Each would incorporate a spring, which would allow it to move back to the rest position when the person stops providing the input. In simple terms, as one side goes down the other side goes up. When the output plunger goes up it could then interact with another lever which provides opportunity for compounding
In doing research on the topic and application of mechanical computing I came across an interesting video. This video is a military training video from 1953, its purpose: to explain the systems that make a naval fire control mechanism work. Naval Fire Control meaning the system which controls the guns on board a battleship to accurately hit specified targets. The video starts with basics such as addition and multiplication by a constant, then moves into more complex and specific calculations taking into account speed, direction, line of sight, range rate, and bearing rate. I’ll include a link to the video in this post, then ill go into a bit more detail about the systems.
Shafts and Gears
The first system discussed is shafts and gears. This system is able to perform multiplications by a constant by varying the size of the gears in sequence. For example, a gear size ratio of 2 to 1 would result in one revolution of the driving shaft being converted to two revolutions of the output shaft, and so on and so forth. This is one of the most basic of mechanical functions.
Cams
The next system discussed is cams, cams convert rotary input to linear output, cams consist of two pieces, a working surface and a follower. The working surface is the rotary component while the follower is usually a pin that rests along the working surface and moves in response to the form of the surface. This means that by manipulating the form of the working surface one can generate multiple mathematical functions. A constant lead cam will function as a 1 to 1 representation of the rotary motion (used in this case for ship speed). A reciprocal cam will represent 1/input, a square cam represents the square of the input, and a tangent cam represents the tangent of the input. Cams can also function with two inputs and one output, this would be a barrel cam (in this case these produce super elevation which is a naval combat function and not necessarily relevant).
Differentials
The final of the more simple systems is the differential, this is a system of gears that can be used to generate the sum of specific quantities, an adding machine basically. In the simplest of terms, a differential consists of 3 gears, two act as inputs and one to act as the output. A simple diagram would be two linear racks to act as the inputs with a circular gear in between acting as the resultant out put. If assigned a measurement scale along each axis, one could start to see that by moving the two racks in specific numerals, the central gear would be situated at exactly half of the sum of the input numerals. From there, one could set the output scale to double that of the input which would result in the accurate sum of the inputs (if that is unclear, I’m including a visual diagram which will explain this better).
Component Solver
Here is where we start to look at the more complex and context specific systems at play in this case study. The first system would be the component solver, which is used to calculate and display 3 vectors: Ship Speed/Direction, Range Rate, and Bearing Rate. Basically, these 3 vectors make up a triangle which is integral to the aiming and targeting of naval guns. The system is a combination of multiple smaller systems. For speed and direction, the system uses a combined gear and cam, the ships direction relative to the line of sight to the target is plotted by a gear within which lies a slot which displays the direction. Integrated below this gear is a cam system which takes in the ship speed as an input and moves a pin within the slot on the gear, further to the end representing high speed and the center representing a zero speed. This pin then interacts with 2 perpendicular racks which represent range rate and bearing rate respectively. Since they are connected with the pin they will move along with it thus calculating and plotting the data.
Integrator
Another one of the context specific systems is the Integrator, its primary function was as a range keeper. By utilizing a rotating disc, two balls, and a roller, it was able to calculate the change in range from a target in real time. The disc would be representing the ships speed by rotating at a specific rate. The two balls would represent range rate through linear movement across the face of the disc. The movement of the balls would then move the roller which would calculate and display the range change. This range change could then be used to calculate the present range from the target. This system could be used to calculate both positive and negative range change as a result of the position of the balls, if they were on one half of then disc then the result would be positive, if they were on the other the result would be negative.
Conclusion
Through the combination and variation of simple systems, the amount of calculations possible is seemingly endless, provided that you have infinite time, space, creativity, and resources to achieve it. Although these systems are most definitely outdated, so much useful information can be gleaned through the observation of them in action. If nothing else, they certainly do provide some infinitely intriguing and mesmerizing visuals.
