SPACE: AUDIO JITTER FINISHED
Posted April 9, 2008 at 9:23 am
Finally got my space project finished up. It even has its own dedicated page, go check it out here.
Tags: Space
Comments (0)SPACE: WORKING OUT LONG & LAT AMONGST OTHER THINGS
Posted March 13, 2008 at 7:51 pm
I was having trouble working out which way longitude and latitude ran across a map so I decided to create a little jpg to help illustrate it:
Using this I can hopefully work out the action-script I need for the flash application to control the binaural sounds.
I’ve also had a think about the locations for the recordings and have come up with:
- Mutley Plain
- Drake Circus Junction (old roundabout)
- Bottom of Armada Way (opposite the civic center)
These, I feel, will give a good variety of noise that should be distinguishable when you listen to it back through the jitter software. Talking about the application, I’ve started to piece it together now and should hopefully have a working prototype by next week, fingers crossed.
PROJECT: SOFTWARE & HARDWARE
Posted February 27, 2008 at 10:48 pm
After pulling my hair out trying to get the HP iPaqs to work with the GPS middleware I was given by Speedy I finally managed to get it working with some different hardware. Adam has kindly lent me his old xda mini pocket pc and I’ve also borrowed a GPS receiver off of Tom. With these combined the software works perfectly, allowing me to read in the GPS longitude and latitude. With this I’ve managed to build a little flash app that can log the gps data to an xml object within flash and then at a touch of a button send it to my server and save it as an xml document. I can now use the basis of this app for my space project. Photo time:
SPACE: SOME BINAURAL RECORDINGS
Posted at 5:41 pm
This afternoon I went down to Mutley plain and took some recordings using my binaural setup. I’m pretty pleased with the results which make a good starting point for more recordings. You can have a listen to them below, put make sure you’re wearing earphones so as to appreciate the full effect.
- Mutley plain facing north: Listen
- Mutley plain facing south: Listen
- Mutley plain facing east: Listen
- Mutley plain facing west: Listen
What I’m hoping to do is use these to show how the GPS jitter as someone stands in one place, moving the sounds in a virtual space.
Tags: SpaceSPACE: BINAURAL RECORDING SETUP
Posted at 1:33 pm
After buying some electrical tape this morning my binaural recording setup is complete and it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg. Here’s what I used to make it:
- Minidisc recorder – borrowed from the equipment loans in uni
- A 3.5mm Stereo to Two Mono Adaptor – bought from Maplins
- Two stereo clip mics – borrowed from the equipment loans in uni
- A pair of earphones – Ipod earphones
- Lots of electrical tape – bought from Maplins
Total spent: £3.02. Sure beats £50 from eBay. I’ve done some test recordings around the house and the results are very promising. Here’s some photos:
Tags: SpaceSPACE: THE BIG IDEA
Posted December 5, 2007 at 11:04 pm
So after being to the Mscape festival and being enlightened to the joys of Mediascapes I have come up with an idea based on my research and previous ideas. Firstly here’s a sketch I did at the festival:
What this little sketch explains is the basic idea surrounding how it will work. What I want to do is take advantage of what some people call “GPS Jitter”. If you don’t know what this is allow me to explain. GPS Jitter occurs on a GPS system when you are in a stationary position in any given area. What happens on the mscapes is your position will circle and jump around causing this “Jitter”. So, I want to create hotspots very close to each other and experiment with sounds and light so you could stand on the boundary of a hot spot and have hot spots jump around. This could change to a different sound, layer multiple sounds and maybe even have a wearable led array or something similar change colour.
This could be a representation of the space through GPS Jitter, sound and light that could be a personal and shared experience. Could even go as far as saying its performative too. It will change the way you feel about the space and how everyone else around you feels about the space.
Whilst at Mscape Fest I attended a workshop titled “Audio Design for Mediascape” run by Duncan Speakman. He let us hear an example of a binaural sound recording, which basically records the sound from the perspective of your ears (the microphones are actually in your ears). This was kind of strange as you didn’t really know if people in the room were talking as you could hear it all around you and it really lifted you out of the environment. For this reason I am keen to experiment with these types of recordings for the project to give dis-locative audio.
SPACE: A FEW ARTISTS TO CONSIDER
Posted November 29, 2007 at 10:47 pm
I’ve been looking at the work of Alvin Lucier; a composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception, James Turrell; an artist primarily concerned with light and space and Christo; environmental installation artist. Here’s what I’ve found:
By Alvin Lucier: Music for Piano with One or More Snare Drums (1990). Description from his website:
“A pianist plays a series of notated pitches in chronological order, repeating them freely in overlapping patterns. As she does so, the tones sympathetically resonate snare drums positioned throughout the space. The drums respond in various ways depending on the pitch of the piano tones, the resonant regions of the drums and their geographical locations in space. This work was written for Hildegard Kleeb and was first performed by her on March 21, 1992, at the Galerie Sous-Sol, Geneva, Switzerland.”
This installation really deals with playing with acoustic properties of sound to produce other sounds from other sources within a space. An interesting, dis-jointed and un-typical way to produce sound relative to a particular space.
By James Turrell: Alta Pink (1968). This is a cross corner projection installation that plays with perception, depth and dimension. I really like the way he has played with a simple shape to create an illusion of an object that seems to have mass and weight. To me hes managed to represent the space of an object in another space and at the same time changed the way you might feel towards the space. Here’s a photo:
By Christo: Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin (1971-95). This is fairly self explanatory, where Christo along with Jeanne Claude wrapped the Reichstag with 100,000 square meters of thick woven polypropylene fabric with an aluminum surface. Both Christo and Jeanne Claude say that there is no deeper meaning to their work other than to make the world a “more beautiful place” or to create a new way of seeing a familiar landscape. To me this is creating a new perspective of the space through concealment, space of representation maybe? Here’s a photo:
So just by looking at these artists I can start to pool the different ideas. I would like to create a project that changes the way you feel and view a familiar space using light, not projected but by a different means and using sound. The sound and light will be affected depending on where you stand in relation to the space.
SPACE: GPS, SOUND, LIGHT AND TIME
Posted November 23, 2007 at 2:42 pm
For space yesterday I had a meeting with Chris Speed to discuss where I could take my ideas of emotion mapping next. The idea is to come up with an idea before the end of the term to present. This presentation is to include the ideas surrounding what I intend to do, so contextualising it all, some drawings or schematics demonstrating how it will work as well (if we have time) a prototype.
I found this meeting really useful as it has given me a good area of research to inform the project. What I took away from it involves using parameters from GPS, such as sync time or another aspect that is easy to hack out, to produce some sort of emotion changing device using sound or even coloured light to do so. The idea at the moment is one where some one would walk around with a device strapped up to a GPS receiver or device and depending on where they go and how fast they move about this will change the sound frequency or colour, giving a spacial artefact or sound mash up. Ok, sounds mad, but its clear in my head at the moment.
I was also thinking about how you always find holes in GPS signal. What I mean by this is when you go out of sync with the satellites and your sat nav stops giving you directions for example. I think it would be interesting to maybe play around with this as well as I’m pretty sure you get the same effect if you walk into buildings or under structures. Worth playing with.
So for the time being I’ll be looking at a few peoples work:
- Christo
- James Turrell
- Alvin Lucier
SPACE: DRAKE CIRCUS EMOTION MAPS
Posted November 15, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Last week we visited Drake Circus to document the space, taking influences from our precedent studies. As I was studying the work of Christian Nold, his Biomapping project in particular, I decided to try and map emotion in the space. At first I wanted to try and do this subtly by taking photos of peoples faces and judge for myself how they might have been feeling at the time.
Unfortunately because of security it was hard to do this, so on Saturday I went back and subjectively asked people how they felt in particular points in the space, giving me a rating on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being unhappy/annoyed/uncomfortable and 10 being happy/comfortable/great. Ok, I know the problems surrounding subjective views as there are other things that can influence how some one feels at the time in a particular space so I really asked them to just concentrate on the space itself, clearing anything else from their minds. This was backed up by Henri Lefebvres Dialectic of Space, taking into consideration representation of space, daily practice and space of representation.
I’ve come up with the following emotional maps, click to enlarge:
I’ve also put my presentation into a pdf which you can download here.
SPACE: DRAKE CIRCUS
Posted November 9, 2007 at 5:17 pm
So, this was the space! Well not quite the whole of Drake Circus but the walkway that runs from Cornwall St to New George St, as well as M&S. See map below if you don’t have a clue where I’m talking about. The green highlight marks the area:
Before we set off to the space Chris Speed gave us a briefing on the space and the sorts of things we could be looking at such as representation of space, daily practice, jurisdiction, legislation, habitual states and organising action. All these defined by Lefebvre, Bourdieu and Foucault of course. All us final years were also assigned first years so we could be a guide for them, giving them ideas along the way for their mapping projects.
As we were meant to be relating the documenting back to our precedent studies I was trying to gauge peoples moods from the photos I was taking. This didn’t really go to plan however because as soon as we started taking photos inside the walkway security jumped on us, stating that we needed permission to take photos inside due to data protection laws. A load of rubbish if you ask me due to the fact that it was a clear public right of way.
However, I was undeterred; some photos I took along with a load from Adam:
Found a lot of branding in there, obviously, along with a lot of jurisdiction in the shape of signs mapping out rules (see photos) and security cameras. There was a large security guard presence there, because of us, and I’m sure this had an impact on how other people acted. Some of the CCTV cameras were also very well hidden, one even disguised as a street lamp.
I managed to capture a few peoples faces but I really need to go back there and have another go. I think this time I will rate it myself, recording how I feel about the space as well as a few other peoples feelings, at different points through the walkway. I will record a mood rating followed by notes about the surrounding space.
