Responsive Environments - MoodMixer Presentation

Editor's Notes

• #5: My main inspirations for this were:Reactable: this is musical instrument that uses a tangible interface where the musician controls the system by manipulating tangible objectsReactable is a product that came from the Music Technology Group of PompeuFabra University (Barcelona), where they have lots of studies and projects going on about music and the relationship with human beings and our behavior.The other main inspiration came from We Feel Fine, one of the installations we saw in the Decode exhibition, and basically consist in a database of feelings that has been expressed in blogs all around the web. This information allows the artist to create endless applications.
• #6: This diagram explains the way the Mood mixer works. The control panel has been designed following the color scheme of the old cassette playersFirst, the participant should click in REC to start recordingSecondly, the music starts (with a base melody) that depending of the mood will include another different sound. Going with this, an animation of a heart beating that will be changing the color.The participant can change the mood by using the disc (showing the disc) that are connected to the sensors.To finish composing, just click in STOP and the program will ask the participant to save the details of the distribution. This is because Flash, as a client side language does not let you save anything in the user computer without their permission. Also, the file is txt and not mp3 or whatever, because flash does not allow you to record any sound.
• #7: Now, a bit of technical stuff.There are 3 levels for each mood, so we have Happy 3 ( that is very very happy), Happy 2 (really happy) and Happy 1 (reasonable happy). And so on with the other moodsAs we have two sensors, one with each pair of moods, at any given point we will have a combination of these two, that is what I call a stage. So basically I associate a different sound and color to each stage.
• #8: And this is the table of moods, levels and stages…..Describing the table: * Moods are happy / sad and Calm / Tense * Levels are 0, 1, 2, 3 (and I divided the sensor’s range, that goes from 0-999) * Stages are table in the middleAt the beginning I though of creating a different sound for each stage, but there are 49 of them! So I worked around that by creating 7 sounds and putting in the middle and then modifying the tempo and the volume to create the restInstruments are h3 timps. H2 guitar, h1 trumpet, 0 maraca, s1 violin, s2 piano and s3 triangle
• #9: As Krueger says a responsive environment can have multiple applications in multiple fields. Education and Statistics are just a couple of examples of what it can be done, but the one that I’ve chosen us Sociology and more specific How during the last few years our perception of privacy has changed. How we do not mind about telling the world through our favorite social network how we feel and what we are up to, but this is something we never though we would (or maybe a generation before us…)To do this, I though about allowing the participant to share in facebook, twitter… the overall result of the experiment (like you are 40% sad and 60% calm), but I am afraid this is not going to happen…. :(
• #10: And with this we reach the last slide! What has it been done so farBasically, the installation can record the distribution properly and show the animation associate with it, save it in a text file and somehow play it (I’m working in an alternative animation for this)And that is all. Thank you very much for listening and I am very happy to answer your questions….