Space, Image & Sound final submission
A quick reflection of the journey this project has been on:
I started with an idea of a project that would alter the users perception in a way that onlookers wouldn’t understand until they tried the device for themselves. I wanted the user to experience some kind of dissociation to make them feel isolated from the environment they were in. I wanted them to feel like they were on a different wavelength to anyone else in the room.
So I started exploring ways to disconnect people, and the immediate way I could think of was to disrupt their means of communication. I downloaded a random clip of people talking from Youtube and threw it into Ableton and started exploring ways to make it incomprehensible, but still having it sound like a language as opposed to just raping it with effects until it was unrecognisable. I found that adding a echo that echoed at different rates for each channel was effective (see previous blogs for that audio) - so I replicated that using live audio in PureData. The delay also had a speech-jamming effect, as having your own voice played back to you at a 200ms delay makes it a lot harder to talk in longer sentences without getting all jumbled up.
The glasses started out as a bit of a gimmick and more of an optional addition to the audio after I realised how quickly that took to accomplish. The initial idea was to emulate a tunnel-vision effect to further dissociate the user - with a couple of spinning hollow kaleidoscopes to fill the users peripheral vision with warped images of whatever they were looking at. The mirrors create a feeling of a larger open space to give the user a feeling that they’ve ‘stepped back’ from their environment and in a passive observer role. The spinning was for a more disorientating effect but mainly to look cool. I’m glad Clint convinced me to ditch that idea as it would’ve been super fiddly to construct and the end result wouldn’t have been worth the effort.
After some experimentation I lengthened the ‘lenses’ to create even more of a tunnel-vision effect, requiring the user to be looking directly at something to see it. This looking quite comical as the user tilts their head around like a meerkat inspecting their surroundings.
This is a project that attempts to put an individual in the role of a mute, active observer through feelings of dissociation. The user experiences an environment from an altered and unfamiliar perspective, and is encouraged to explore and inspect the world and its sounds without the means to communicate with others.
In terms of potential changes and further refinement, ideally I would like to have some form of wireless microphone as it has to move with the user. Michael had the idea to turn the project into an app which used your phones microphone, which is a brilliant idea that would enable the user to be anywhere and have maximum freedom for exploration. I don’t know how to code apps but this might be something I look into in the future, however I do like the face that the user has to walk up and hold a microphone towards different things/people. I’ve found it generally encourages people to be playful and make weird sounds as well as trying to communicate with the user (which is often very ineffective). The goggles could use a bit of refinement in general - a few gaps you can potentially see out, more ergonomic design etc.
I think I’ve pretty much covered everything in this novel of a blog post, I’ve very much enjoyed this paper as it was finally a chance to try out some interesting ideas I’ve had that don’t have enough ‘value’ to pass of for a studio project. I’ve never really been interested or any good at projects/designs that solve some big issue. Cheers Clint for allowing me to make stuff that just does its own thing and doesn’t have to relate to some topical problem - Its been a real treat.
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