I would like to dedicate this post to digest a technical part of the project that I have worked on and to document the feedback received on midterm presentation and on show-a-thing event that happened on Thursday.

Last two weeks were successful in establishing a many-to-one MQTT architecture thanks to Pierre, who helped me with the client script on Arduino to publish sensor data to the broker. First, I have used an online cloud broker shiftr.io but I wanted to have my own backend to be able to store data. I have found a solution in AEDES broker which runs on node.js and locally.

I really like the structure and the organization on Github since the January course virtual world, where we have learned to use the platform for management tasks and to keep track of our project’s development. I am pushing all the scripts related to the project on my Github repository where I also started a wiki page to keep track of the most important parts of the project and to document what’s to do, in progress and done.

Moving forward, I created my first Max for Live MIDI effect that serves as a controller for translating sensor data to midi in order to manipulate which ever parameter in Ableton. My first experiment was with ultrasonic sensor, which I used to change the frequency of the built-in auto filter effect that was attached to a synth.

Midterm presentation & show-a-thing

click here for presentation

For my midterm presentation I think that I’ve been successful in communicating my general plan and my timeline for the remaining weeks. Andrew’s e-mail was really helpful to update my presentation slides for show-a-thing event and to put more focus towards aesthetics, design and storytelling. I dedicated most of the time in between midterm and show-a-thing to build a Unity  prototype scene. As I have mentioned in my midterm presentation, design will be my main focus in the next month and Thursday’s meetings with Jaime Allen, Heidi Brant and Nathier Fernandez have been exactly what I was looking for to accelerate the progress.

I really like Jaime’s ideas for user journey experience, where an installation would represent an abstraction for deforestation to enhance empathy for natural ecosystems. In short, when a user enters, he would be presented with various different species sounds and natural sounds and when a user would continue his exploration and interact with different objects, there would be less and less sounds due to negative human activities. His feedback really helped me to understand that I should be focusing on a specific ecosystem or a specific environmental problem to create immersive experience through exploration.

Heidi Brant has supported my idea of using an airport as a space for this installation because it is a place of transition and it emotionally powerful. She told me about the birds that are trapped in JFK Airport in New York City and how unbalanced it looks like which lead to a question how can nature be a supportive factor in public places? Her feedback on scalability of the project was really relevant and in parallel with Jaime’s idea of a user journey experience which will help me to narrow it down. She referenced a great project by Kelsie Lu because her storytelling through performance is really strong.

Nathier has provided a lot of great reference to deepen my research and I will be sourcing them in my GitHub’s wiki page. She introduced me to this idea to augment reality of what did the airport land sound like 100 years ago before and I believe this can be a strong narrative to ascend empathy levels.

Thesis Journal homework

  • What do you need to change or develop to encourage your ideal interaction?

I have to develop a visual identity of the project and the story to have a strong narrative of the particular environmental problem that I want to bring up so that users don’t just interact and have some agency of manipulating sound but to actually feel a story and to be immersed into it which will lead to higher empathy for natural environment.

  • What additional research would help advance your project?

Additional research is related to the references provided by Jaime, Heidi and Nathier and the topics of deforestation, biomimicry and Slovenian ecosystems. Maybe I want to focus on Triglav National Park which is secured by Unesco and any kind of interventions in this park are forbidden.

  • Do you need to update your production timeline?

I think that my production timeline is clear and on point that’s why I will try to realize it till the end of the semester.

  • What user testing do you have to do?

I have to do a user testing in a small private place for example in my room and invite people to experience and interact in the space.