Soundzzz
by designer: Sungwoo Park
Soundzzz is a product designed to use the motion (vibration) of a speaker as a tactile, experiential, aid for the hearing impaired.
The idea is to use vibration to represent sound, adding to a visual experience, by using the sensation of touch to replace hearing. By this standard, and the experience of a person with all senses intact, the tonal range and separation of sounds inherent in a film soundtrack, or music in general, would be represented in some way by vibration, or a system of vibrations.
This system for navigating sound would be difficult to achieve. For one, representing sound by frequency, which is essentially what is happening, is good for effect, but does nothing to differentiate the quality of sound, which is crucial for a film soundtrack and music. Sound has emotive qualities, an A major and an A minor are close in frequency range, producing an almost similar vibration (I would think), but opposite emotive qualities. Soundzzz designer attempts to address this by adding color along with sound. A nice feature, but I'm not sure how it works exactly; what frequency range matches to what color; if there's a range of colors other than the three pictured (brightness factors?), ect. Another problem might be that many sounds happen at once. Overlapping vibrations, I suspect, would be difficult to differentiate. Not that I have elephant skin, but I've been told that people who lack one or more of their senses compensate with sensitivity in the others, making it possibly easier to separate those sounds out. Nevertheless the designer separated the pillow shape into two hemispheres, one with a speaker producing high frequencies and the other with a speaker producing low. The design also seems to make use of areas of the body with sensitivity. The picture shows it being held against the chest and belly with hands and fingertips flattened over its surface; all of which are seemingly sensitive areas of the body.
Although this product is geared towards the hearing impaired, it's not far off the concept of vibrating chairs in a movie theater and could be applied in other experiential and product designs.
Soundzzz
Thereminator
by: Yonac
This is music application for Apple products which uses the motion of a persons finger over a touch sensitive screen to navigate the quality of sound. It synthesizes the sound of a theremin, a radio frequency based, analog instrument used to make just about every eerie sound in radio and television in the 1930s and beyond. It uses the movement of a users finger over the touch sensitive screen to generate changes in sound: volume, pitch, effects, ect. The navigation aspect in the application is the performance of the user. In this respect, visually speaking, the app. is successful in my opinion. One of the challenges in playing an actual theremin is learning to hit the right note, since it uses the proximity of a persons hands in space, from two metal rods, to control pitch and volume. With this app. the notes are marked on the screen, while criss-crossing green lines on the x and y axis showing the user exactly where they are in the spectrum of sound. The downside may be that the finding-the-note quality inherent in playing a theremin may add something to the performance. However, this navigation is perfect for an iPhone app. where people understand touch functions. And there's even a "touch free" option that allows the same controls over sound by simply moving the devise around!
For more info go to iTunes and search Thereminator.
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