APD Week 8: Play and Sound

Play it here: https://musicindiiz.itch.io/audible-alphabet

Password to access: magistudio

Context

I have been thinking long ago before this theme was introduced this week. The idea of how it would be nice for blind people to be able to hear a beautiful sound that visualized from a book or poem for example. How can I make an interactive work that gives the impaired an opportunity to experience something fun and interesting? I found there are so many interactive pieces but haven’t seen any that is friendly to impaired people. I know there are so many audiobooks out there where these people can read a good book by hearing them. 

From this thought, the first thing that caught my attention when talking about the impaired is Braille language. I found it’s very compelling and has a value. On top of that, this language can’t be understood if you didn’t learn it. How I can draw these two group to enjoy the same interactive work together? Braille can be understood by the impaired only but music and sound can be understood by both group. I believe in the power of imagination and this music without lyric can bring user imaginary further even you can’t understand what it writes in Braille but you can imagine from the sound. Research by Collins and Karen (2013) had demonstrated that both sighted and visually impaired players are able to conceptualize a physical game space in the absence of visuals.

Paint The World - Spoken Word (https://vimeo.com/177500172) This is a motivational video that spoke about how the word you choose to say toward other people every day can affect their life somehow. If you want this world to be more beautiful, you have to choose the nice word. This gave me an idea of how to create sound from words regardless of the meaning of that word. It is can be seen as an impact but with its unique sound instead of real impact.

Satellite: Experiment using Sifteo and MS Surface (https://vimeo.com/42312417) This work has the core idea as same as what I want for my project, however, it has the more playful function and also beautiful visual for the user to play with and it gave me an idea that maybe I can push my work further by included visual into this piece. The idea of get together to play with this work is also inspired me that probably each person can choose a set of sound and play it together to create a completely new sound from the work. Anyhow, this will be a lot bigger scope to do in a week.

Method

I will use Unity to create the first prototype of interactive work where user type in a word and each word will create a different sound.

Response

I have to plan what the main function of this interactive work then break down into smaller thing that how can I get that function done so it’s easier for me to write a C# script. I randomly selected everyday sound or ambient sound and embed it to each English alphabet. Once I get one button done and functioning after that I can just copy, paste and change the sound and key.

Reflect

Actually, the main idea of this work was to embed sound into each Braille alphabet on a paper and when the user touch their finger on each alphabet it will somehow make a sound. As same as when they scroll their finger through each alphabet, it will create a piece of music. However, I had no idea how could I make that happen in a week. I had done some research and apparently, there is a tool for the blind to attach it to a computer keyboard which gives them the ability to type in English by using their Braille keyboard. I then scope down my work from that to just type a word in to create a unique sound to show the core idea which can develop further.

References

Collins, Karen, & Collins, Karen, author. (2013). Playing with sound : A theory of interacting with sound and music in video games. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.