SonicBella Supporting Documentation
Jung In Jung MSc Sound Design The University of Edinburgh 2010
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
List of Figures The figure in the title page: Ideal environment with SonicBella for relaxation. Figure 1: The Treepee found by Amber Lee (original source from http://www.cookiemag.com/magazine/blogs/nesting/2009/07/treepee.html) Figure 2: The Kid’s Zone in The Oslo Opera House. Figure 3: Arduino wired with LDRs for SonicBella. Figure 4: A LDR is attached underneath of the umbrella with a 100k resistor and connected to Arduino.
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SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
SonicBella is an umbrella that has five light sensors1 underneath and those sensors are connected to the program I made to operate sound.2 It is designed as a sound therapy tool to give the users joyful experience through play with various sounds putting them in a relaxing environment. It asks the user to lie down under the umbrella, which is the position they can relax their body, and play with the sensors. The sounds are interacting with the user’s movement, measuring the distance between the sensors and the user’s hands. In this document, I will explain in detail the entire development of SonicBella. 1. Appearance of SonicBella The reason that I used an umbrella is based on a childhood memory.
When I was at a
preschool age, I used to play under
the
umbrella
and
I
remember those moments as secure and comfortable. I found some of my colleagues had similar
experiences
such
as
playing under the table or in a tent. I also found some websites selling children’s tents 3 and a Figure 1. A picture of hideaway on a mother's blog. She described hideaways as "A place all my own where I could play with friends or go be alone".
mother’s
blog
introducing
children’s hideaways for play.4 I
assume some children like playing in that kind of places because they feel being protected or feel comfortable having their own space. Moreover, I had a chance to visit the Oslo Opera House and there was Kid’s Zone outside. The Kid’s Zone was a huge globular shape of tent and I could see a similarity with my use of umbrella from here too. So I decided to keep developing my idea. 1
They are LDRs (Light-Dependent Resistor). I used MAX/MSP to program it. Examples: http://www.creativeplay4less.com/, http://www.easyfuntoys.com/, etc. 4 To see the whole text and other hideaways, go http://giverslog.com/?p=3994 2 3
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SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
Figure 2. The Kid's Zone in the Oslo Opera House. It is built with a globular shape of tent and the cushions inside make it look cozy.
2. Relaxation and play … when an act is performed solely because of the pleasure it affords, there is play. (Groos 1901:5)
Groos has focused on pleasure in his analysis of play experience. Some people choose to play to please themselves or take a rest from stressful work. There are different ways of relaxing depending on the person’s mood, but the common fact of relaxation is that people want to get away from their worries or demanding life. One might think that play cannot be a relaxing procedure, because every kind of play has its frame or rules, but I approached its attitude rather than how the activity is formed. 3. Sound Design for SonicBella It is hard to define what is “pleasure sounds” like and it is up to the person. But I decided not to use too “heavy” noise which can hurt or irritate the user’s ears and used two jell speakers attached to the top of the umbrella, which make the space more intimate with sound. I set two different modes in the program that are ‘Sunny Day’ and ‘Rainy Day’ and it chooses the modes randomly as soon as it is on. In ‘Sunny Day’, it plays a quiet external ambience sound including bird singing, and, in ‘Rainy Day’, it plays the sound of rain tapping on the umbrella. 4
SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
The sensors operate different sounds depending on these modes and I also used melodic elements. I wanted to make the users feel like they are playing a musical instrument when they play with the sensors. The image of playing a music box, which simply turning the handle of it without any necessary skill but it creates a pleasant tune, came up to my mind. I recorded a music box playing the tune Old MacDonald had a farm and chopped out each note. In ‘Sunny Day’, about five or six separated notes that are some original sounds from the music box and some modified, like the sounds are emerging slowly5, are stored for each sensor and the sensors generate them randomly whenever it senses the user’s movement in front of them.6 For ‘Rainy Day’, I convoluted the original sound with piano resonance7 to make the sound warmer. And also in this mode the sound can be panned between the two speakers depending on the distance with the sensors and the user, like they are floating around under the umbrella. There is no more sense of playing the particular tune the music box had and eventually the user creates a new tune. In the program, there are three recorders that record operated sound by the sensors for 30 seconds, 60 seconds and 90 seconds. When they finish recording, they play the recorded sounds in various forms. The 30 seconds one plays backwards and the other two play as the drawn lines in the function object8 and these lines are modifiable by the user. After finishing playback, the recorders start to overwrite and play the latest.9 Because they keep updating recording, if the user stops generating sound using the sensors, they record empty tracks so that the user can enjoy the background ambience sound only too. After this first stage of work, I decided to make the sensors operate different sounds after a certain amount of time10 to keep provoking their curiosity. So in the ‘Sunny Day’ mode, the sound changes to grain sound reminding small bugs such as ladybirds or bees flying away in springtime. The original source of this sound is the 5
To make this effect I reversed the original sounds and put delay on them and then reversed again in ProTools. But as I mentioned above, these are light sensors so they actually sense the lower amount of light. 7 I used the program ‘Sound Hack’ for the convolution. 8 It is one of the objects in MAX/MSP. It allows the programmer to draw or store a set of x, y points. In my program, x is the duration that I set for the playback and y is the time domain of the recorded sound. So if the line increases, it plays forwards and, if it declines, it plays backwards. The playback speed is decided by the steepness of the line. 9 The recorders write the sounds on RAM so the recorded sounds disappear when the program is turned off. 10 The sensors operate different sound after 60 seconds since the mode started. But this is not instructed in the program on purpose so that the user can think it changes sound when they are not expected. 6
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SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
scraping pistachio shells on a slab with added Doppler effect on it.11 In ‘Rainy Day’, it changes to the sound of rubbing the top of a wine glass filled up with water. The three of sensors operate the pitches A, E, and A (one octave higher than the first one). The fourth sensor generates C# and F# and the fifth one generates D# and A (one octave lower than the first one) alternately.
After careful consideration and
discussions with a musical composer, I chose those pitches because I believe that they produce a ‘bright’ harmony when they played altogether. 4. Other technical work I used Arduino 12 to connect the light sensors with the computer so that it can control my program to operate sound. Arduino
workshop
I attended the held
at
the
University of Edinburgh (Alison House) by Chris Hand, in order to achieve this skill and there I found sensors work in the same way as switches.
Figure 3. Arduino board wired with the light sensors. This board can be connected with a USB cable to the computer so it was very easy and efficient way of connecting sensors to make them communicate with software.
Figure 4. A light sensor with a 100k resistor using a terminal block attached to underneath of the umbrella. One of the terminals of LDR is connected to the power on Arduino. Another terminal with one of the terminals of the resistor are connected to one of the analogue inputs and another terminal of the resistor is connected to ground.
11
I used the plug-in ‘GRM Doppler’ in ProTools. It is a circuit board that can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors or switches and can control lights, motors, and other actuators. In my case it controls my MAX/MSP patch. 12
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SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
I used the MAX/MSP patch provided by Arduino to get the values from the sensor in my program.13
SonicBella has been tried and tested by five colleagues at Alison House. Their responses were positive and they all received the relaxation experience I wanted to offer through this project.
13
In my MAX/MSP patch, the top left, which highlighted with a blue panel, is the MAX/MSP patch from Arduino. 7
SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
Bibliography Books Caillois, R. (1962). Man, Play, and Games, trans. M. Barash, Thames and Hudson, UK (French edn. first published 1958). Groos, K. (1901). The Play of Man, trans. E. L. Baldwin, William Heinemann, London. Huizinga, J. (1995). Homo Ludens: A study of the play Element in Culture, trans. J. Huizinga, Beacon Press, Boston, MA (German edn. first published 1944). Lieberman, J. N. (1977). Playfulness: Its Relationship to Imagination and Creativity, Academic Press, New York.
Dissertation Costello, B. (2009). Play and the experience of interactive art (Doctoral dissertation, University of Technology Sydney). Retrieved from http://utsescholarship.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/984
Blog Lee, A. (2010, Feb 8). Every Child needs: A Hideaway, Message posted to http://giverslog.com/?p=3994. (2009, Nov 18). Children’s Play Tent Roundup / giverslog.com
Website Arduino. http://www.arduino.cc/ Creative Play. http://www.creativeplay4less.com/ EasyFunToy.com. http://www.easyfuntoys.com/ 8
SonicBella supporting documentation
Interactive Sound Environment MSc Sound Design Jung In Jung
NHS Choices. (2010, Feb 7). Relaxation tips for stress. (2008, Jul 31). Retrieved from http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Stressmanagement/Pages/Relaxation.aspx?WT.src h=1&gclid=CKDFoZOw_Z8CFQkulAodDhLCjw NHS Choices. (2010, Feb 7). Exercise to relieve stress. (2008, Mar 05). Retrieved from http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Stressmanagement/pages/ exerciseforstress.aspx
Workshop Hand, C. (2010, Jan 27). Arduino Intensive workshop. The University of Edinburgh.
Additional Musical Advice Dimitirios Skyllas. MMUS Composition, The University of Edinburgh.
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SonicBella supporting documentation