For my final project, I plan to build a physical media controller that can be used to create music and author musical compositions. Expanding on my concept of visualizing sound in a spiral form, the design will use a three dimensional spiral form to contain six octaves of notes. Each note will have an RGB LED and a digital push switch to activate and visually indicate a note being pressed/played. Below are some drawings that explore different form factors. The third concept has been selected as it lends itself to be hand held and will likely be more intuitive to “play.”
To begin, I will make a flattened, simplified controller with only a single octave of notes. This will allow me to explore the coding, wiring, and functionality of the device.
This is a study for a live image processing project which takes live video streams and visualizes them in 3d by extruding the pixels based on luminosity.
Concept and coding are original, using Processing and its built in video library.
My sound spiral project exploration has expanded to include input from a MIDI device. Certainly this makes it much easier to play a recognizable tune, however, only a single note can be recognized at a time with the current code. I hope to rewrite the code using a different approach for scanning the MIDI connection, so that ten keys may be pressed and/or read simultaneously.
To work around the limitation of only being able to play one note at a time, I have programmed in a “chord mode” to my sound spiral project. When holding down the spacebar on the keyboard, chord mode is toggled on, and pressing a single note will play a 1-3-5 chord. I hope to add buttons to the interface which would allow you to turn on and off chord modes with various chordal combinations. That with a record and playback function will push this project towards becoming a true composition tool.
Last summer I designed an innovative way to visualize music in a spiral arrangement. As you move around the spiral, the pitch of the notes increases, and if you move in one step towards the center, the note increases one octave. The idea of the spiral is to put an emphasis on octaves, as they are lost in standard linear music notation. And the idea of visualizing music is to help listeners understand the relationships between notes by offering a second, supplementary sensory input.
Now that I am learning Processing, I decided to revisit my sound spiral and make it fully interactive. This video documents my first version of the Sound Spiral Piano.
Earlier in the semester I had an awful time trying to get a car to move using a DC motor. It turns out it was a gearing issue. Working with Melissa Clarke (who mastered the axle/wheel interface) and Michelle Temple (who assembled and debugged the gear box), we got our tractor moving like it was at a Monster Truck Rally.
I have three ideas that I am considering for our first major project in the Into to Computational Media Course. I am equally interested in all three and hope to do each of this projects at some point, so I need to decide which one makes the most sense for this project and this timeline.
Concept 1 – Visualizing Data
I wish to look at a large dataset that changes over time (either stock market or record/average weather temperatures) and visualize this information in layers. With some playing around with graphic design and data visualization in the past, I hope to use processing to create a program that is a more effective communicator and fully interactive.
Concept 2 – MensWear Color Assistant
I have a strong background in color theory and I wish to create a web application that assists men in color coordinating their outfits. I envision the program using color sliders to allow users to dress the manequin in their proposed outfit, and then fun an evaluation function that would confirm or deny their choice and make an alternative suggestion for a better outfit.
Concept 3 – Sound Spiral
While in graduate school, I wish to revisit my sound spiral project and develop it further. I wish to use Processing to make a functional, interactive program that allows users to press keys and make sounds, or input a midi source and watch the music as it is visualized.
Observation 1 – Conducting research in a public place in New York City is not as easy as it use to be. Now that Big Brother is watching for terrorist threats, any time you hang out in one area, you are immediately suspicious. I knew that I wanted to watch people interact with MetroCard Vending Machines in the Subway, but finding my research spot proved to be difficult. The first spot I selected, the Broadway Lafayette station, had three police officers with a searching table set up next to the vending machine, so I got back on the subway. Next I went to Prince Street, but at that station there were Armed Guards changing the money in the vending machine, so I didn’t think they would want me hanging around either. Finally I ended up in a good spot at 14th Street Union Square.
Observation 2 – Staking out my spot at the tail end of the rush hour commute, I imagined that the flow of people would be moderate, but not overwhelming. It turned out that very few people needed to use the vending machine, as they already had a positive balance on their MetroCard. It is interesting to note that there are many chances to use something like an ATM, Vending Machine of Food, and other similar interfaces, most people seem to use the MetroCard machine infrequently.
Observation 3 – Users of the machine looked visibly confused and/or frustrated. Navigating the many choices seemed okay, but when it came time to pay, inserting cash and getting a credit card to swipe and be approved seemed to really slow things down. One person completed the transaction in 30 seconds, but most took 40 seconds to 60 seconds to get their card and be on their way.
Observation 4 – Most people inserted their current MetroCard to add money, which implies that they were existing users of this system and not first-time users. Despite their prior use, they seemed equally frustrated, delayed, and unsure of what to do. Again, the payment part of the process seemed to be the bottleneck.
Observation 5 – Although there were two machines next to each other, frequently there would be several people waiting to use one machine, while the other was left free. And several people canceled their transaction midway only to move to the adjacent machine to try again.
Observation 6 – Before MetroCard Vending Machines existed, the only way to buy a metrocard (or token) was to visit the ticket booths with ticket agents. My guess was that the vending machines were put into place to automate this process, saving the city money by having less wage workers on the clock and saving the end user time by reducing transaction time and line waiting. Assuming these were the goals, this has not been a successful change of service and behavior. Many users first went to the ticket booth, only to find that they had to use the vending machine. Other users started off at the vending machines, but then went to ticket booth for help, only to return to the vending machine. Clearly the machines are not easy to use and the ticket agents have been recast as technical troubleshooters, possibly a function they have not been trained in or that they do not want to perform.
In this video, you can watch as one women has an awful time getting her MetroCard, only to then seek help from the ticket agent, and finally to give up and leave empty handed.
This simple test was for a Physical Computing Lab project to create serial communication between Arduino and Processing. After numerous errors, I discovered that I needed to upgrade to Processing 1.08 and then proceeded without any trouble. I chose to use a Sonar Range Finder as my sensor input, controlling the movement of a ball on the screen.
