End of week 1
For this week, we have focused on getting an understanding of the code and for the module. We have made two sketches. The first one is the Rotator. With this sketch, we wanted to control an object based on volume. The object moves at different speeds depending on the volume, and if there is no sound input, the rotation will slow down and finally stop.
The sketch worked, but perhaps not as smooth as we wished, but we decided to explore the code more instead of refining our sketch. I think this was the right choice for us since this sketch only was to understand the code and make an example where we could use sound as an input.
We wanted to test and learn more about using two microphones for our next sketch, so we decided to create a sketch where one mic controlled the x-axis, and the other controlled the y-axis.
This sketch was more responsive and gave you the feeling of it responding to the background sound. But we didn’t have much control over the movement.
We had discussed that we might want to work with different materials and how sound is affected by the material. To better understand this, we decided to test how sounds are played through material changes. We did this by playing different sinus waves through the material and picking up how the sound changed. We thought we would find more differences and were a little disappointed in the result we got. There was no significant difference between playing through a material or just picking up the sound direct from the speaker. Looking back at it, I can now see that perhaps we should have tried more and with other kinds of sounds, more natural sounds, and then we might have got another result.
To be able to take a new step in the process, we discussed it with Jens. He helped us break it down and suggested that we focus on small sketches that only had simple interactions and later build on them to create an interaction with the nuanced control. I think this will help us with the process since I tend to try to do everything at once, and then it gets too big and complex from the beginning. It is also harder to evaluate the interaction and the nuance of control when adding different interactions.