The week, a reflection going back to some key messages I gathered previously with interviewers, feedback givers and offices hour early this month are further structuring my work foundation.

My wonderful feedback givers are Tiri, Huiyi, Greg and Nathier in sequence. (the feedbacks of first three are in the previous journal). I want to take time to reflect on the conversation with my fourth feedback giver Nathier who was enthusiastic about stories around voice and she kind shared with me lots of ideas. She reminds me about her voice in gender, language and community. One very interesting angle to look at voice is through the lens of indigenous voice chanting, where singing is to reinforce a social community. Her experience provided a powerful storytelling to think about my stance and metaphor in voice, a couple of examples that she mentioned are strong for example: I don’t like my voice so I want to give my voice to a plant and it start now/ so I wan to make my voice like a fungi, or a machine. lol. She went on to share ideas around voice and identity, also the idea of “You have the face of who you most loved in your past life” that gave me threads to think about many things in life, and meaning searching in life and voice. Her suggestion on what to do was a brilliant metaphorical one: continue to experiment and take the things that are meaningful to you and focus on the things that will work for you just like you go for a buffet. Finally, prototype with tech and also with PEOPLE.

In early April, I asked questions round how can one accept their own voice and the interviews were all more or less leaning toward scientific referencing. Which is to provide a therapy like process with variables to understand the solutions’ effectiveness. This kind of solution will take time to offer an audience to absorb and transform. Still, the goal of voice-acceptance is likely to be achieved and the assumption is that it will take “time” to happen. At the same time, the discussion of exposure therapy and emergent therapy came in in multiple sessions which serves as a huge enabler for me to think about a user journey. The idea of providing a process for audience to experience their voice turned out to be a thing that will be an important part to my work. Furthermore, I would love to provide a less intimidating but rather explorative and informative for the audience as previously mentioned. Andrew also gave me tremendous support in thinking about a process, possibility and next step. For example, we talked about as interactive story-piece where user will join and their voice will take part first as a minor role abstraction but gradually building up to be the major role in the story line. The abstraction voiced sound in literal harmonic qualities of major and minor could possibly be leading through emotional moments and becoming the play.

This week, after a session playing on my #2 experiment with Andrew and Ellen (which I just got the video and will certainly visit it very soon, I will make sure it doesn’t go anywhere;)). Being exploring possibilities connection p5 and MAX. I went back to my #1 p5 experiment and further work on the overall experience of the sketch and trying to expand on the previous idea. Although I am temping to work more on the voice and listening part however I decided to make one step more about avatar abstraction and hint scripts (rain drop). A very quick introduction was made in below:

Hi welcome to my thesis journal vol.13, I would like to invite you for a play-testing of my updated #1 experiment or click here: https://editor.p5js.org/powenshih/sketches/d4vXYocVC

First, please use computer mic and speaker(without headphone) -> Hit play p5 sketch button then single mouse click on canvas to made recording mode ready. Single press space to record and single press space again to stop record, very easy. After this, you will just have to repeat press space to record and stop like a looper. By first to record a sentence speaking out the raindrop scrips that your eye can catch, app. 6-8 secs duration and let it plays for a while. Repeat record and stop several times (5-10 times) by press space keys, what do you feel? (in fact, a similar effect of “I am sitting in a room” will appear if the experiment is done without headphone with at least 5 times of looping). – Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies (e.g. different between a large hall and a small room), the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room … wiki
I wonder what you hear sonically?
How long did you hear about it? Do you like it or not, why?
How many time of loops did you do after recording the very first sentence?
How you feel about it?
Did you hear any music or musical notes? Can you tell in what key or what notes you heard?
Did you fins any interesting ways to work with this sketch? How and why?
Tell me more about this way of listening to your voice!
voice and perception experiment #1 updated
voice and perception experiment #1 updated