DSDN 142: Project 2

Structure and Noise

Research

I decided to further my research with sound by conducting my own cool little experiment. Since I looked into sound waves, it gave me the brilliant idea of looking into visualizers that were used in popular music players these days, like iTunes or Windows Media Player. So what I did is relating what I said in one of the previous post was the type of music and genre that the song is, can relate to either it being structured or just plain noisy. So I fired up iTunes on my Mac, I chose to experiment with the 'Classic Visualizer' instead of the new one, since the classic made more recognisable shapes and it felt like it understood the music better. 

Starting it off I chose to pick a classical song. I played the most calm song that I thought I had which was a beautiful piece by the famous Japanese pianist Yiruma. I chose his song 'River Flows In You' and to my surprise, iTunes gave me this visualizer of what pretty much looks like a river flowing in me! What are the chances. But as we can see here it is a very calm shape, 2 colours have been used and it's almost repeated through out the whole screen. There is nothing noisy about this, especially if you're listening to the song at the same time.

With the second song, I had to pick something that I thought was going to give me a noisy image. Of course I chose dubstep as the genre and ended up picking Skrillex's song 'Kyoto'. Straight away I wasn't surprised when the first thing that came up was this image below. We can definitely tell that this is not a calm song. It created wavy shapes everywhere with different shades of colour, along with a blurry background that didn't make sense. 

As we can see from this little experiment that I had conducted, that sound too can have both structure and noise. By just looking at these 2 images, you don't even have to have heard the song before to know what they sound like. But also an interesting factor that captured my attention was that the first image I thought, can easily be transformed into the second one. This would be great to use as an example for my coding, working with something that looks like sound waves or a visualizer to create a cool looking final. 

If you want to hear the songs from these artist to know what and why I conducted this little experiment, I have added 2 links here that will take you to youtube so you can listen to the difference and will get you to understand completely my point. 

[Yiruma - River Flows In You] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMBXk5GngmY
[Skrillex - Kyoto] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86khmc6y1yE

DSDN 142: Project 2

Structure and Noise

Research

http://www.mediacollege.com/audio/images/loudspeaker-waveform.gif

I continued to research my idea of sound for my project, by looking at sounds waves that are described for our hearing. With the image that is showed above, it shows 2 different ways to look at how sounds hits out ears. The one on the bottom is what I say is the structured image. It is a constant shape that 'repeats' itself throughout the whole process. However the one above it is what looks like sounds waves coming out of a speaker. We can immediately tell the difference between the 2 images, with the top one being more noisier than the bottom. This is because in this diagram they described that random waves from speakers can differ all the time and don't really have a structure to it, but putting it in a simpler term turns it back into a structured form just because of the simple shape of it. 

DSDN 142: Project 2

Structure and Noise

Ideas and Brainstorm

I started off to think about what objects and shapes can be used to turn from a structured image, to a noisy one. Any geometric shape whether it's the square or ellipse could easily be used to create a nice looking process for this project. For instance starting off with only a few shapes with a couple shades of colours for a structured image. This can then lead onto a whole lot of things. The shapes could multiply to fill up the whole grid, or they can change sizes and pile on top of each other. But of course to do any of this or to even think about it, we must consider what we are trying to show for a start. Originally I had an idea to make something with a lot of lines and to use the colours originated from 3D images. But I figured that I can come up with something more interesting than that and something that wouldn't be too hurtful on the eyes. I decided to look into sound. Sound is a great example of structure and noise, since it can be either one. Structured sound would be something that's constant. Like a constant beat in a song. It could be calm and slow, also something that's understandable. Noise on the other hand could be something a sound that's all over the place. Relating it to music it could target genre's like dubstep, the sound of dubstep usually isn't very structured and is very confusing. There are a lot of different types of beats and drops as they would say within the music. 

DSDN 142: Project 2

Structure and Noise

Structure is the repetition of objects and shapes, which have been thought about and organised clearly and neatly. Noise on the other hand, is a lot more "grungy" compared to structure. A good example is when you flick into a TV channel that has no service, you get a fuzzy black and white pixelated image all over the screen that doesn't make sense. Also, the more colours that's involved within the image, usually indicates that it's noisier as well. If you had a bunch of little squares which were just black and white, it'd be quite structured because it's repeated and recognisable. However, if it had maybe 4+ colours spread out each square it'd be quite confusing to look at, making it a lot more noisier. Another factor relating to the squares is that scale can effect how noisy an image can be. Usually a bunch of smaller objects or shapes put together tend to be a lot noisier but bigger shapes slapped on top of each other can also be taken as noisy. 

DSDN 112: Project 1

A-Maze-ing Textures

Exhibition Description:

This custom created maze is designed to focus solely on the ‘touch’ sense. The main idea behind my object is that the user needs to interact with it by only using their finger. In order to get through to the end of the maze, the user must stick to and feel the same texture on the maze and to use it as guidelines. By taking away our sight, all our other senses should improve, which makes it perfect for the textures I have added in to be more recognizable. I investigated different types of materials and discovered that sandpaper would be the most suitable to use since I am working with wood, it also has several different smoothness. My object involves a lot of concentration, since there are some tricky parts within my design which could either send the user back to the start, or end up in a loop. This experience could range to be a very enjoyable feeling of satisfaction in completing the maze. It can also lead to frustration, however. 

DSDN 112: Project One

Prototype Presentation

For this studio we had to bring in our prototypes for our first project. I developed my first model more into an actual interactive maze, based on the feedback from the previous time. I made it out of cardboard still, creating a 30cmx20cm size maze. The walls this time were a little shorter compared to my last, this way people could interact better with it regardless of their finger lenghts. I incorporated sandpaper into it again, using 3 different types that were all coloured black. The way my maze worked was that you weren't allowed to look at it, you had to use you finger and feel your way to the end. The only way to do that is to stay on the smoothest sandpaper, if you felt a different texture then you'd know you're going the wrong way. 

These were some of the feedback & suggestions that I have received:

-- Make the maze walls even shorter than they were, only since the flat part of your finger has more feeling in it than the tip of it. This way people won't be confused on the material textures.

-- Also another problem with the maze walls is that they were cut up in a way that each corner had extra bits sticking out of it. This gave way to a very confusing maze, as each time you touched it you were left wondering if it was the edge or it was the end.

-- Trying to switch to a different material altogether. People suggested that the sand paper that I had used was too recognisable. In a way I did agree with this because when people were testing it they got through the maze too fast, I needed to make it more of a challenge. I will continue to investigate further materials like wool and silk etc.

-- Related to the sand paper, someone said that it confused them every time the ran their fingers over it because of the way I had cut it. The same material was next to each other, but there was a gap between them where I had cut and stuck it down. This gave the user the idea that it was a completely different material. A good way to solve this was to get a big piece of sandpaper, and stencil out the whole maze so I didn't have to cut any of it.  

-- One great idea that someone suggested was to confuse people into doing loops around the maze. Opening up a part of the maze so people would start going into circles would give my maze a frustration factor, which is also what my tutor suggested. 

-- Another idea that someone mentioned, was instead of having so many walls, have and use grids instead. This simply means that it's an open maze but the only way to get to the end was to follow the right material, by moving from square to square or grid to grid.

-- One main thing that was also brought up was an indicator to where the start and where the finish was. People were confused when they were doing my maze, simply because they didn't know where and when they reached the finish. So people suggested that I added an award or something similar to indicate you when you reached the end. I was thinking something to do with sound, that or I could be mean and add a mini zapper to zap your finger.

-- The last thing that I asked my classmates, were if I should 'black-out' my maze, or just simply use a blindfold. People chose the blindfold instead, since it was more of a efficient way of taking out the 'SEE' sense.

DSDN 141: Project One

Storyboard

This is my storyboard that I designed for project one. It simply explains my ideas on what I did and what experiments I have conducted with paper.