learning the ropes

I re-encoded the original video using QuickTime Pro…

Output as QuickTime Movie (could have also tried “export  for web”)

Video settings
Compression: H.264
Quality: High
Key frame rate: 24
Bitrate: 720 kbits/sec (optimized for streaming)
Frame reordering: yes
Encoding mode: multi-pass
Dimensions: 640×480

Audio settings
Format: AAC
Sample rate: 48.000kHz
Channels: Stereo (L R)
Bit rate: 128 kbps

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For the record: In addition to our blog, we have ongoing emails. The initial email might be about scheduling a meeting, and then grow to include questions and research about, well, anything. Here’s an example, after I told Michael I wanted to meet in the city so I could buy a projector, maybe at B&H.

Wendy, Here’s about an hours worth of searching.  I stumbled onto pico pocket projectors.  Let me know if you want me to back out to “normal” projectors and see about low cost.  My view is that the small projectors could be a good prototyping tool for you in the same way that the photo frames and the XActi camera are.  You may even be able to connect your XActi to one of these. Michael

(The email had an attached  PDF)

Interactions:

• Cranking
• Sitting or standing (eg a switch, or weight)
• Proximity
• Motion detection
• Pulling/pushing
• Running (e.g. treadmill)
• Color detection
• Sound (e.g. of you clap, it turns something on)
• Opening/closing (e.g. door, window, drawer)
• Positional sensing
• Hitting keys
• etc…

Static Type:

• Spray paint
• Silk screen
• etching
• Letterpress
• Stencil
• Cut out
• Scratch
• Burn
• Scribble
• Sandblast
• Woodblock
• Magic marker
• Pencil
• Typewriter
• Sewn/needlepoint
• Neon
• LED
• etc…

Materials:

• clay
• Wood
• Cardboard
• Plastic
• Styrofoam
• Cloth
• Paper
• Glass
• Metal
• Rubber
• Screen
• Leather
• Carpet
• Grass
• Sand
• Food
• Concrete
• etc…

Typographic manipulations:

• Letter spacing
• Line spacing
• Bigger/smaller
• Fonts (reg, bold, italic, black, condensed, etc)
• Color
• Focus—in/out
• Rotate
• Distort
• etc…

Act I – The HighLine

My father and sister came to visit this week and we spent a bit of time out and about in New York City.  One of the places we visited was the HighLine – a recently opened park utilizing elevated space along the west side of Manhattan that was formerly a railway freight line.  As we walked through one of the more “designed” areas of the park (pictured above) which passes through a building, I heard something which got me thinking about acoustics in a space.  At certain spots in the space, I could hear  music playing and in others, I simply heard the background.  There were also spots where I could hear conversations around me more clearly.  This got me thinking about the role of “obstructions” and surfaces in the context of this installation work.

This idea seems to resonate somewhat with Wendy’s last post about focusing sound.

What if the space had features which reflected the sound so it could be focused in different ways?

Act II – Moveable Type

I also revisited the “Moveable Type” installation at The New York Times building on 42nd St and found myself much more focused on the sound of this installation.  In addition to the ambient sound design that accompanies the transitions between the scenes in the work, it seems to me that each of the 560 vacuum-fluorescent display modules also contains a speaker.  This has the effect of providing localization to some of the specific transition sounds.  I have a hard time imagining the installation without these sounds.  While they are almost akin to “sound effects”, they seem to me to add impact to the visual transitions in a way that just feels right.  The little clicks and zaps add dimension and context (perhaps through subtle sonic editorializing) to the information that is displayed.  Without these sounds, the quantity of text is overwhelming.

I’m also thinking about the connection  between the movement of the text and the way the sound reinforces the visual effect of that movement.  They’re bound tightly together.

Act III – Fashioning Felt

The Cooper-Hewitt Museum’s Fashioning Felt exhibition gave me an opposite experience from the one I had while walking through the HighLine.  Several of the works in the exhibition were acoustical panels made from industrial felt.  I wasn’t aware of felt’s sound absorbing properties.  Seeing (and hearing) how much the Diller Scofidio + Renfro designed conference room wall divider (a sandwich of clear polycarbonate between two patterened sheets of waterjet cut industrial felt) absorbed sound make me think of how this sort of material could be used to control the acoustic space of our installation.

Laptops are the main tool for now.

A sketch of a complex interaction in the gallery space using rope&pulley interfaces.  A collection of ropes connect satellite “private” spaces to a single “public” space.  Participants in the “public space” manipulate ropes connected to the “private” spaces and engage in a dialog, which consists of projected words of a conversation in both spaces.  I was imagining in this sketch that a participant in the “public” space could engage in a “tug of war” with another participant in remote “private” space (and perhaps there would be partitions to further reinforce the idea of “private”).  More conversations are projected on the floor in the “public” space as more participiants pull on the ropes.

Other thoughts:

• Projecting on the floor may cause some interesting effects as the light is broken up by the pulleys and the people.
• It could also be interesting to cover the pulleys with screens so new participants in the galley don’t immediately see what is happening.
• Are pulleys an appropriate interface for this?  Are we limiting our possibilities by considering this interface instead of other interfaces?
• Should participants in both “public” and “private” locations be able to see what is being “said” in both locations?
• Projections could fade away after interaction stops.
• More activity (rope movement) brings a conversation “forward” (meaning on top) in the public space.