As of now various hardware bits are on their way in order to make this project a reality. Making their way to my house are a set of speakers, a wiimote, a bluetooth adapter, some infrared leds and some AA battery holders. This didn't put me out too bad considering I was in need of speakers anyway.
In practice the use of the wiimote with max/msp should not present too much of a problem. Masayuki Akamatsu's aka.wiiremote patch will handle interpretation of data streaming from the wiimote. There is plenty of support for this.
This rotational data from the wiimote can be fed into any number of multi-point panning patches that I've come across. The best I've found so far is Michael Zbyszynski's Panhandler~ patch which in conjunction with the VBAP object makes setting up multiple outputs and panning a sound through them pretty painless.
All of this gives me a pretty good start on the actual implementation of the back end of the project. The only real complications may come from trying to manipulate the sound in a customized manner that does not involve simply following the user directly. Some other ideas that I'm toying with that will complicate things (yay) include 3D panning of sound, ie an additional speaker above the person which will allow tilting of their head to correspond to alterations in the panning. Also, I'm very interested in allowing the user to effect the actual audio indirectly through the nature of their movements in order to add another layer of interactivity and weirdness to the project.
Friday, March 28, 2008
New Project: Auditory Illusions
Proposal for project #2/possibly 3 can be found here
This project formalizes ideas I've been toying with for some time. The basic aim is to create an environment in which someone can experience disorientation through sound manipulation. To accomplish this I will be making use of surround sound and overhead head tracking by way of the wiimote and two head mounted infrared led's. Based on a person's orientation sound will be panned through the speakers to either give the sensation that their movement has no effect on their audio-sensory experience or that this experience is unreliable and/or not to be trusted as a true representation of their surroundings. Those experiencing this installation will be blindfolded to produce a reliance on sound to determine their positioning.
For now this project is as much curiosity as artistic ambition. I'm set on creating a specific experience; one of confusion and disruption. Beyond this the idea of auditory illusions is the driving force beyond this experiment. It is my hope that through experimenting with this system new insights will arise and allow it to progress further into a more fleshed out idea.
This project formalizes ideas I've been toying with for some time. The basic aim is to create an environment in which someone can experience disorientation through sound manipulation. To accomplish this I will be making use of surround sound and overhead head tracking by way of the wiimote and two head mounted infrared led's. Based on a person's orientation sound will be panned through the speakers to either give the sensation that their movement has no effect on their audio-sensory experience or that this experience is unreliable and/or not to be trusted as a true representation of their surroundings. Those experiencing this installation will be blindfolded to produce a reliance on sound to determine their positioning.
For now this project is as much curiosity as artistic ambition. I'm set on creating a specific experience; one of confusion and disruption. Beyond this the idea of auditory illusions is the driving force beyond this experiment. It is my hope that through experimenting with this system new insights will arise and allow it to progress further into a more fleshed out idea.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)