Intervention result

In order to visualise the intervention into the site I took video of the intervention and then edited it down to show the successful results where the intervention cause reactions in the passers-by, as well as including evidence of the physical intervention. In order to visualise the intervention working I first considered visualing the sound itself using circles or lines to show the location and range of the sound. However I felt that this did not relate enough to the focus of the video as it did not highlight the reactions of the people. Therefore I decided that it would be good to visualise the sound in a way that would seem to be attracting their attention. This led me to the concept of the sound reaching out and taking hold of the people who were affected by the sound. I then used After Effects to put the visualisation over the video. The following is the final result of my intervention project:

This visualisation uses lines and glow features to highlight both the source of the sound and its way of reaching out to people. These features also disappear as people walk away as this resembles the attention being lost and therefore the intervention intervening less in the space. This visualisation seems to give the sound life as it shows it changing and reacting in ways relevant to its surroundings.

Ultimately this intervention was both successful and unsuccessful. I did obtain reactions and therefore the sound did intervene with the people and the space. However there were also a lot of times in which the sound did not have an effect, specifically when I used more environmental sounds. If these had been louder and therefore more obvious I may have had more success with them, but as it was these did not acheive the desired effect. However the reactions I did have were as expected and so the intervention that did occur still worked as intended.

Developing the intervention

After finding that the plan to put sound into the site had been successful I began to develop further ideas in terms of the kind of sounds that I could implement into the site. In particular it occurred to me that it would be interesting to implement environmental sounds into and environment in which they did not correlate and see what reactions people would have to this juxtaposition of sound and environment. For example, would people react to the sound of thunder and lightning when the weather in the environment was sunny. I therefore collected three extra sounds to be played as well as the site sound model. These were crowd noise, rain with thunder, and ambient rainforest sounds. Below is a link to the different sound files I collected.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=e151d9e8833e799608f8df73f2072ed64e69f587816a4ea50ac99885da44e881
To listen to the files select the one you want to hear and then select the download link to download and open the file. Once I had selected and edited these sounds to be used I then took them down to the site and carried out and documented the intervention so I could produce evidence and an overview of the intervention.

Intervention - first implementation

In order to test the effectiveness of my intervention idea, I decided to do an initial implementation into the site using the site sound model for a short period of time. I went about this by using portable speakers and my iPod to play the sound into the area. In terms of positioning the sound I wanted to put the source somewhere where it could not be seen so that the sound could not be instantly connected with the speakers and iPod. I also wanted to choose a place within my site which would be passed by the majority of people as the sound would get lost in the open environment quite easily and so it had to be in a position where it would be heard. Due to my research during the modelling stage I was aware of the most used route of travel through the site and so could use this data to help me position the sound in the best place. I therefore located the sound in a bush near this route where it would not be seen(shown below).

I hoped that this would cause people to be intrigued about the source of the sound and also surprised at its existence in the location.
When I played the sound into the site I was very pleased with the results that I obtained as I observed many reactions to the sound without the sound being intrusive into the ambience if the area. Once I had discovered that this concept worked I then started to consider ways in which I could use other sounds to create similar effects.

The Intervention

The next part of this module is entitled the Intervention. The brief for this project is to:

'make an intervention in the context of your site. This may extend the first terms project, manifest itself as a physical intervention, a virtual construction, performance...'

In order to work out the possibilities for this project I begun by producing a mind map of different ideas and concepts including the examples that we have been given during the lectures on this topic.

After working through these ideas, and considering the information previously collected when investigating the site, I have decided that the best step to take first is to play a sound back into the site and see whether this changes the way people act within the site. In particular the sound model made in the previous section would be good to play back into the site as it is directly linked to the location and the people and so any results from this would be more relevant. Once this has been carried out it will be easier to develop the idea and make it a more interesting and effective intervention.

The Soundscape Model

This post is the final post of the first section of Strategies for Art and Technology. For the project we were asked to find a site in Plymouth and then collect data from it, which could then be turned into a model of the site. The steps taken to do this have been shown in the posts below. The link below is to the soundscape of our site which is the model that we have produced using the data that we collected. To hear this file please select the download now link then select open on the dialog box.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/izjyqoznzcz/Idat101-audio.wav
The following is a powerpoint presentation on the key points of the production of this model and what it represents:

The next stage of the module is to use the ideas and data we have collected to make an intervention in the context provided by the site, be it physical or virtual. By constructing the site model and other elements, this gives a basis from which to work on this next project.

Separated data graphs

In order for our site data to be turned into a soundscape the data on the graphs needed to be separated into each of its area components. This allowed the information on the graphs to be read more easily and therefore converted into sound. This post is to show these separated graphs so that you, the reader, can also get a better idea of what the data is showing. Firstly, below is an image showing how the site has been split up into the separate areas which the data is based on:

By separating the site up in this way the data could be collected for each part allowing the frequency of people in the area over time to be studied more specifically. The graph in the previous post shows the data for all of these areas together. However to be able to model the data the information had to be separated back out into the individual squares as above. The graphs that were produced are shown below:

The aim now is to use these graphs to change the data into a soundscape. The peaks and troughs of these graphs will be used to define different elements of the sounds, for example the pitch may be high on a peak then drop to a low pitch in a trough. The general outline of these graphs will also make this easier as more generalised curves can be produced from these to highlight key areas of change. This can then be used to make the soundscape.

Starting the Model

Over the last week me and my site partner have been working on designing and creating a model of our site to represent some of the data that we have accumulated over the term about our site. We discussed a number of different solutions based on the types of data that we had available and decided our key focus was to do with the number of people moving through the site at particular times, as well as possible their flow through the area. We then used our workbooks to come up with some way of presenting this. We both agreed than an animation over time was the kind of model we wanted to produce and so began to design this using our workbooks as inspiration. We eventually came up with an idea inspired by the cubist representation of movement through the area that I drew in my workbook shown in a previous post. We used this to create a simpler outline of the site which was split into 5 rectangles.
We then discussed how we could animate this design and realised we could use our tallied data of the number of people in the site at a particular time to manipulate the rectangles. However we then realised that the data we had would have to be reformatted to match with our design. We therefore shared all the data we had and between us entered the data into a table that formatted the data accordingly. Once the data had been written we then produced a graph of it to give a better and more generalised view of the changes in the number of people over time. The graph is as follows:

However after showing and discussing this approach with our lecturer, we realised that the idea and the data did not really match up with each other very well. Therefore the next step is to reconsider how we could represent this data. We are currently looking for possible ways to change this data into sound which is one way which would be good to display it as well as considering other possibilities.