For me, “Place” DMSP was an irreplaceable and memorable experience of great significance. It was the first time I worked with so many people, but luckily everyone worked well together and communicated well, which made it a great experience for me. Here I would like to record my feelings, gains and the place I think could be better, the problems I encountered and how I overcame them, and express my gratitude to the group members and tutors.
I am primarily responsible for field recording, which I feel very honored to do, not only because it is an important attribute of the location, but also because it is the initial part of the sound work, and all subsequent sound creation is based on it. This made me feel obligated to do my best, so I did a lot of planning and preparation for the official recording, and the final result was satisfactory. Please check the details in the blog linked below.
The most valuable gain of this practice is that I realized how to be flexible and adaptable to solve problems – if I don’t have a windshield, we can find a similar material for an emergency, and if it doesn’t “fit” well enough, making it rub against the diaphragm, we can use tape to fix it, there is always a way to solve the problems. I also learned some live audio tips from David, which are very useful.
Another advantage of taking on this job is that because this part will be done up front, I have full energy and time to get involved in the subsequent parts and add to the other parts of the sound design as well (Although 4 of us are responsible for a part in sound work respectively , everyone would like to help each other out through the whole work. I really enjoy the atmosphere and way of cooperation in our group! ). In the process, I was deeply impressed by the great work my teammates have done——the super elaborate max patch from David and the beautiful creatively sound design from Xiaoqing. I was also greatly deepened my understanding of max/msp and Arduino, which is also very beneficial to my learning in other courses.
In addition, I even have the opportunity to develop more possibilities and realize it. Once again, I would like to thank our group members for their active communication with each other. It was because of a chat with Allison that I was able to make a new attempt and breakthrough my limit.
She told me that the ddm students are trying to use Kinect to capture the movement of audience to trigger the visual effect, and ask me if we sound people would also like use it as another sensor to tigger some sound. It sound fascinating and I was very interest in it, although I don’t know any related knowledge.
This was an attempt to learn that required me to explore completely on my own, whereas before, when I encountered problems that I did not know how to solve, I could by and large find help from others, ask teachers or students who were proficient in this area. But this time I can only search the information on the internet, and I did encounter a lot of difficulties in the process. Thankfully, I eventually found a way to do it and even expanded the functionality it could achieve, which was an unprecedented breakthrough for me. In this way, we only have to use one sensor to control both Touch designer and max, and at the same time, use the sound data triggered in max to control the effect in Touch Designer, smartly deepens the visual and auditory connection. Since want to achieve this I have a lot more chance to communicate with the group mates who works on Touch Designer, I leaned a lot on the visual system of our project from them and also becoming friends with them. For more details on my search, please check the blog linked below.
An exploration of Kinect, TouchDesigner and Max data transfer
There are also some thing I want to but have not done or some little disappointment in the project. Since the time was not very enough and there are already quite a lot things happened in the sound field of the project, the original field recording was not directly been put into the sound field, and we also didn’t use the Kinect to trigger interactive sound. In fact the Kinect was hardly used in the exhibition, because the ultrasonic sensor was not enough stable and accuracy, most of our audience have to hold an iron plate . We had a brief discussion on it after the exhibition, maybe instead letting audience holding a heavy plate, there will be better way to make it more reasonable like the “wheel idea” from Allison. As for the Kinect, it might can capture some other data like the height of audience hand, or the distance between two feet of the audience. There is another problem happened on the exhibition. Maybe because the performance of the computer running Touch Designer was not good enough, or the network was not that good, when the sound triggered the visual effect, it did not look as smooth as in the usual test.
In a word, through this valuable experience, I not only gained knowledge, but also broke through and gained friendship. Thanks to this course for providing me with such a great opportunity, and thanks to Asad and Jules for their rich guidance, sincere advice and full support!
Chenyu Li
