Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Party Wall



VIDEO
Pitchtest: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiVZmk38j6o
Prototypes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdoCtQh87UA
Final Prototype: Party Wall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhfwnYMmG0Q



Party Wall
Typ: a dividing partition between two adjoining units or sides that is shared
Rare: a social surface that activates during increasingly varied pitches of sound

Walls of buildings are usually silent spectators when it comes to socialization. Maybe walls don’t have much to say, or maybe they don’t have a voice with which to speak. Historical tales often begin with sayings such as “Many events have happened within these walls,” or “if these walls could talk,” each implying that walls keep tabs on what happens on either side of them. But we prefer to think of walls as participants in those events. We propose a different wall that reacts to different sounds when and as they occur. In this way, walls show their emotions as reactive to the conversations, discussions or arguments that people have within them.

Our premise began with examining the difference between male and female voices. After cataloging many different voices, we found that the perceived pitch of voices was different than the numeric register of high, medium and low voices. The exhibition of these three ranges of sound became the focus of our prototypes. Different parts of the wall activate with different pitches, creating varying patterns of movement across a surface. Within each conversation, someone’s voice can vary through many different octaves of sound, and the wall is a reactive, responsive system to such stimuli. To process this sound in real-time, we utilized live feeds fed through a microphone, processed by live sound analyzing software that then signal a microcontroller when sounds falling within preset ranges were detected. These signals trigger the movement of memory alloy wires that move to pluck a membrane covered in inflated condoms, amplifying the social potential of a wall’s thickness.

In developing this project, potential directions and applications for such a surface were discussed. We hope that as people discover the responsive nature of the wall, it might invoke them to deliberately manipulate the surface, for instance, by purposefully modulating their own voices or by engaging with others in order to witness an effect. There seems to be great performative implications for socializing with a wall, something that might seem dull at first. In our playing with this patch of wall, it often appeared to have a mind of its own, as there was often a time delay in the reaction within. At times we stopped paying attention to the wall and noticed later that the wall was still capturing subtle differences in tone and mood while we were caught up in conversation. The notion of the wall as pet began to emerge from this observation. The condoms were at first thought to be uncomfortable, humorous, gross and provocative, but as they were inflated and arranged into a soft field they immediately took on a cuter, more comfortable character. Even still, they seem to invoke some sort of hesitancy about physically engaging with sexual forms and accoutrements that are often taboo in public settings.

In the end, the party wall is not only a monitor of vocalized social interactions, but it suggests different ways of occupying space. The relationship becomes a feedback loop whereby the sound of a person’s voice in a room, passively activating a wall, then offers the option to directly perform with their surroundings.

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