this journal focus on my experiment #1

From Adam, Michael, Yiru, Maria, Chris, Enrique and Guest Thomas Impiglia

  • want to play it, getting a sense of call and response, much human experience
  • face abstraction is like a separation and reflection
  • think of what could be added to the voice, ambient sound? play with my enhanced voice
  • still the instruction is not clear how to operate and how to experience it
  • it’ now mixing voices from zoom and became very playful
  • the call and response is shifting?
  • The Lime Works – under hearing and over hearing
  • spatial idea about we hear about sound
  • Maybe it can be more play with ambient directions
  • spatializing sound would add another dimension to it
  • want to have more choice to manipulate the layering 
  • taking ownership of your voice – passive or active
  • public space/ gallery/ web experience
  • text as another element
  • speech pattern as mantra and text can reenforce that 
  • text could response to words directly
  • play and adjust the transcription of spoken words
  • mixed of other people’s voice over the volumized avatar face
  • want the work to make choice for me
  • it’ lovely to be shown my voice could be that one wouldn’t understand
  • tones and over tones that is not capturing by the micro phone
  • in depth analysis or voice and translate to visual and sound
  • interaction  before user start to play with their voice? to understand and evaluate the gap and expectation of their voice
  • less or more control, how commanding is the tool
  • trigger audience to say, or hear one’s own voice and allow to say something,
  • playful volumized effect is appreciated

My takeaway: 

 

Michael:

while others have said that they are interested in having more choice, I actually want to be shown more. What is lovely is realizing something about my voice that I wouldn’t have been able to hear or understand on my own. I love the abstraction and seeing my voice translated into the image of these dots coming out of my face. I wonder if there is more sound analysis you can do to make the visual response more personalized for each user? Is there a way to analyze the composition of each person’s voice with a better microphone to make more interesting visuals?

My takeaway: 

 

Rudi:
I like several aspects of this sketch you shared. One of them is that you added these words, that they add another dimension to the work. I also enjoyed the aesthetic aspect, despite that it was -as I mentioned before- distracting from the focus on the voice. I particularly find the bouncing balls or particles coming out of the face doodle take my focus from the sound experience.
 
I agree with Eric about the prompt, even after reading your instructions I was not sure about what I was doing and if there was a problem with the camera / lag of the text falling. From what you described, I don’t see any need to use the camera at all. Additionally, I was not sure what could be the right procedure to record my voice. 
 
Perhaps part of the difficulty is merely technical (instead of pressing a key or the mouse, using the sound level to fill in an array of sound objects) and part of it also needs help with the ideation. Words like “body” and “self” resonated very well with me and I thought I could feel what you were talking about.
 
The last thing I would like to add is that the reading/listening experience seems to be a good approach and we are starting to see the results of it. Areas that could be exciting to play with could be to play with the volume, panning, and timing of the playback. You could also let the text slide at a rhythm that allows the user to choose their words and create some pauses in between.
 
My takeaway:  It occurs to me that focus on listening and create meaning of listening tight to my topic much more important than the aspect of visual from feedbacks that I gather so far including yours. I found your advices on post three and four resonates strongly with me and wanting to do more around triggering voiced sound and defining way to hear and create soundscapes.
 
 
Eric:
 
You would have do something to make the prompt more clear for the participant. Without your instructions, I wouldn’t have know what to do.
 
Would people need to wear headphones when doing this or not? Without headphones the recorded audio gets rerecorded through the speakers, which I enjoy, but maybe that’s not what you’re after?
 

My takeaway: I agree the instruction is very much needed in my work. Indeed, the characters resonance of speaker, room spatial quality is not I am going forward but I enjoy it a lot, too. This p5 currently lives in a web experience with audio. The sketch helped me to get quite a lot of feedbacks from fellow students which broadens my knowledge. 

 

Ruta:

With headphones_
I really enjoyed this experience more, it felt like the additional background noise created a nicer, more subtle environment where my voice was one with it.
I especially liked it when I tried it on the train, because the environment was much louder and it felt like my voice merged with it and wasn’t so annoying 🙂
I still feel that the voice is sometimes too loud, I enjoyed it more when it went into the background and was more quiet.
I liked seeing myself in the background as well as the thin avatar outline (I thought that the thicker one wasn’t necessary as I liked seeing myself).
 
No headphones_
Here I felt that the environment noises were too intrusive as I could hear myself clicking the space bar (it even ended up being annoying) and it took more attention than my own voice.
Maybe my sound was set too loud, but I thought hearing myself was too loud and not as subtle as with the headphones.
I ended up feeling too overwhelmed because the sounds I heard back were always very loud that I couldn’t hear myself trying to record new things and then didn’t even see the words because the avatar was always highlighted and took on the full screen.
 
Overall, I like the background noises when they are subtle and merge with the voice (doing it on the train felt somewhat poetic) and I would also think what to do with the avatar, so it also blends to the environment and not overwhelms it.
 
On a general note, if you want more people to user test it, I would add instructions to the top of the p5 sketch (1. press play, 2. press the canvas, 3.press space key to start/stop recording).
 
My takeaway: There are many aspects in the feedback helpful to me especially you tried both ends. The instruction and user journey is certainly something to be worked on very soon. There is a very similar case I got from the avatar that it went crazy using it without headphone lol. One of the most helpful part in your comment is regarding the ambient sound, it is super interesting when I first think about it and it echos to some other related ideas around. The background noise is something can be tricky but can be a natural and rewarding element to my current experiment. This let me to think about what Andrew suggested in my previous journal where thinking about background score happening to compliment the user experience.
 

Fututre timeline planning yet to come

5/6

5/17