[Audio Walk] Artists Statement

Group: Anne Feldman, Katherine Kwan, Danning Lu

Our response to sound is demonstrated in four different ways, physiologically, psychologically, cognitively, and behaviorally. Our audio walk uses elements from the four different types of responses to create an interesting narrative carried our solely by audio. The participants will be split into two groups, each taking a different route and experiencing the walk though two different characters.

Some keynote sounds include everyday sounds that are often unconscious to us. These include footsteps, wind, students talking in hallways and other sound elements that can be heard around the York campus. Sound signals heard through the walk include sounds of an elevator and cell phones ringing.

Different parts of the walk will affect the participants in different ways. Through the narrative of the two characters, we hope that both scenarios will create a physiological effect. This will be carried out by music, creating an increased heart rate due to the fear and excitement of an unknown situation. This is also related to the behavioral effect, as the fast tempo in the music will motivate listeners to feel rushed, due to the situation they are in. The psychological state of participants will be affected by the story of the character whose shoes they will walk in through conversations they are having throughout the walk. These conversations will allow the participant to get inside the character’s head, and hopefully feel a similar emotion. Cognitive effects will be noticed in areas where many sounds are present at once, and each participant must choose what sounds to focus on.

We wanted to put a playful twist on the assignment and create a walking tour that told a story. Through focusing on the four ways we are affected by sound, the class will be able to participate in the world of the characters we created, and see where they end up. 


For my part in the group, I did the editing of the original sound tracks made by Katherine. Also the field recording of the background sound.

[Audio Walk]

Girl's Part


Guy's Part

[credits]
Girl's part: ending music: First Love - Utada Hikaru
Guy's part: ending music: My Heart Will Go On

Girl's Map











Guy's Map

Here is the MAP! [DRAFT]

For Group Members

http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/gv1.mp3

http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/gv3.mp3
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/bv2.mp3

Deep Listening

        There are more sounds than we have ever thought about while listening deeply in the lecture room. While people are typing their paragraphs, the sound of typing could be heard clearly, which indicated how fast the person is typing. The sound of moving plastic bags sounds much louder than it used to be since the bags are in such a big room. Other than sounding louder, the bags also sounds noisy some how. There were also sounds of people’s movement indicated by the sound of the friction of clothes and the sound of the friction between shoes and the ground. The sound of friction is also pretty loud and I could even hear the sound of the sands on the ground. There were also people whispering. Although I cannot hear the whisper clearly since it seemed to be far from where I was sitting, it turned out to be a buzzy sound. The sound of the fan from a laptop next to me can also be heard clearly, which are not easily to be heard in such a big room.

     Deep listening brought people with more sounds that they may not hear in their daily life. Since human beings are “visual animals”, we, as human beings, prefer to see rather than just hearing. So there are many interesting sounds that we might just ignored because we prefer to see. Deep listening could exaggerate the regular sound we might hear in a specific area, and can help us hearing some other sounds that we always ignore in the scenes, just like the sound of the fan of a laptop.  

Audio Walk - very first recording of the background sound

Boy's route:
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/110315_001.mp3
DOWNLOAD

right click -> save link as...

Girl's route:
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/audio walk/110315_002.mp3
DOWNLOAD

right click -> save link as...

MurMur Audio Walk

      So I chose to go for the Murmur audio walking on Spadina Avenue. Walking on the street with different people telling different stories of the same site, I felt that I was in a big city museum. I had experience walking while listening to the explanation of what I am looking at. However, that experience was only in museums. Murmur provides people to walking around the city and hearing people talking about the site and their own memories of the site. On Spadina Avenue, some old sites have all gone and changed to different retails, however, in the sound track, we can still get to know what it was in the past. For instance, there was a man talking about his art gallery and his stories in that gallery, but in the same time, what we have in front of us is a closed retail store. It is interesting to have things like this while walking, what we’ve seen is not what we’ve heard, and what we’ve heard is the history of both the site and the city while what we’ve seen is the present of the site or the city. 

     While walking on the street, listening to the stories, for people who haven’t seen the old street, the stories create a space for the listeners to imagine what the street looks like before; and for people who have seen the old street before, these stories will definitely bring back their memories as well as their own stories.      

Route Timing

                 G                                       B

1m           Golden Lady                     between ACW and Vari, approaching 36      
                hungry,
                talk about
                people eating

1min 30s get phone call
                [ topic]
                 who's the guy?

2min       Enter Vari                         Fire hydride
                about to lose
                reception
                going 2 elevator

                                                          what the statue is about?                                                 

3min       Elevator                            approaching orange statue
                slow and creepy             still on the phone, reads the description out loud

4min       top of Ross                      approaching stairs

5min       end point                         end point
                tired of waiting               gets girl's number from friend
                turns music on               calls the girl

5'45"             Talking to each other, find out they were at the different sides of the same spot

Map for Audio Walk

So here is the map for the audio walk. Since our group decide to do two routes rather than one, there will be two lines on the map to represent each routine. (Girl's-orange, Boy's-Blue)

For the visual walk, please check here

presentation PPT

PPT－3D Audio


LINK：

https://docs.google.com/present/edit?id=0ASkzVC48OE5OZGY5Z2ZmanZfMGhma2Y1NGY2&hl=en&authkey=CKvA7okK

SKP file

With Scenes:
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/3D/final/forpresentation.skp

Without Scenes:
http://dm.finearts.yorku.ca/~shgfl007/3D/final/forpresentationv2.skp

Device Poster

Here is the final poster of the device!

Project Presentation Video

Project Diary: Day ??

Here is the final poster but will surely be changed!

Explanation of the Model

     The Next Generation Shoes are the new kind of shoes as a commercial product. The whole shoe is designed to appear in a boot’s format; however, the zippers on the shoes can make the boot to be the transformers! It can turn from a pair of boot to a regular shoe or slippers. A layer of LCD screens under a layer of nano-coating covers the surface of the shoes. The LCD screens provide possibilities for you to change the graphics on you NGS and the nano-coating is protecting the screens from dirt, water and scratch. NGS is designed to be a pair of shoes that you can wear any day during the year.

      There are three small engines in the sole of NGS. The engines are equipped with sensors so that it can know the direction you are heading to and provide power so that you can actually fly or slide with the special particle (GN particle, found in Gundam series not possible for now) provided by the engine. There is a small computer in the sole, which has a USB port so that it can get charged via USB connection. The small computer is the controller of the LCD screens on the surface. While setting up the graphics, you need to get it connected by the USB and use the software on your computer to get it set.

Project Diary: Day 7

Can't believe this is day 7!

Ok, today I get my ideas down and get some sketch. So, here they are!

The top one is in a high heel style and has more possibilities of different shapes than the latter one.

The top one actually has three engines, two of them can adjust their direction to make the wearer either go higher or go forward.

While the latter one has two, both of them can change direction. The engines will hide in the sole of the shoes and there will be some kind of "door" to keep the engines in a proper environment so that they will not break because of water or snow.

There are sensors in the bottom of the shoes, so it can get the information of the direction that the wearer wants to go, so the sensor can deliver the message to the engines and decide the direction of the engines.

Oh, and there are zippers on the surface of both shoes.

As for the controllers, the man shoe's controller is on the fort side of the shoe, since that is the part will not be moved. And for the woman's shoe, the controller is on the side of the sole (or maybe it is better to put it in the heel? ). The controller can provide the wearer to decide the appearance of the shoe which is the graphics that will be showed by the screen on the surface of the shoe. The wearer can use blue tooth to upload the graphics to the controller of the shoes and there will be some kind of memory stick to save these graphics. However, the memory will not be bigger than 128M (or 64M?) since we need to keep these things small and it is not necessary to use bigger memory stick. 

Project Diary: Day 6

Ok, I just get all my ideas generated and listed in the earlier post. I went to the Bata Shoe Museum yesterday and got something from these shoes.

I decide to use the marten boots as the fundamental shape of the shoes since these ready-made models could provide possibilities to the use of the zippers and the sole is also heavy enough to put in two engines.

I may also make a high heel series if I have enough time.

For the final, I think I'm going to make a layout of the shoes and make it to some kind of advertising or in a rather commercial style.

I've got the basic things in my mind and I'll post the sketch some time tomorrow.

Device Proposal

Basically my device would be a pair of shoes.

The differences between the shoes I'm going to make and the regular shoes are:

◎ They would satisfy the wearer's aesthetic needs by the movable parts on the shoes that are combined with zippers
◎The surface of the shoes will be covered with small screens so that the wearer can change the graphics on the surface 
◎ For the practical using function, since the parts are combined with zippers, the will be covered by nanophase materials to either protect the screens and making the shoes waterproof
◎ There will be two small engines in the sole of each shoes. These engines can spurt some kind of special particle that can provide the wearer enough power to make them run faster, jump higher and even fly

Body

        The relationship between my body and I is similar to the relationship between the user and object. While the body can be considered as two parts that are body schema and body image. While the body image designates the body as the object or content of intentional consciousness, the body schema characterizes the body as a “prenoetic” function. So from my point of view, the body is dominated by the conscious of the owner’s mind. And on the other hand, for some occasion, the body reacts to the emergency faster than people’s conscious. In these occasions, the body moves itself without consciousness; however, the body is moving under the subconscious.

       The relationship between the body and technology is sort of subtle. The recent researches are greatly focusing on the body movements as well as the reaction of the body. Technology can bring the body with more possibilities and the body on the other hand, helps technology to develop faster and create new things to relief the body from many high-risk environment.

Project Diary: Day 5

I have to write this down...

For the tear-down parts I thought about yesterday, I don't feel it is practical to make these parts in Sketchup and it is not possible to show how these things work. So I came to another solution, I can make zippers on the shoes like these pants that can adjust the length of the pants by moving part of the pants, and each part that is movable is combined by zippers.

P.S. I'm going to the Bata Shoe Museum today and try to get some inspiration from these shoes.  

Project Diary: Day 4

I did got some ideas today about the transformation of the shoe.

The basic form of the shoe would be a winter shoe, and once the wearer want to make a shift between different styles, he/she would only need to tear the specified part of the shoe, and this will not have any influence on the other function.

This is what I've got so far and I will be out of Internet access for one or two days, so I will continue this thing after I get Internet access again.

Project Diary: Day 3

Ummm.....

I've got no idea today....

I was wondering about whether it is possible to do a pair of shoes that can transform from one style to another...

I looked for "concept shoes" on google and find the appearance of most of these shoes are designed with geometric shapes. I also found a pair of shoes that has a speaker on the side and can also work as a CD player.

Project Diary: Day 2

Ok, I thought about several functions of the shoes today, and they are here:

◎They can change their appearance according to the wearer's willing. For this, I thought about adding screen to the surface or make the surface itself as a screen.

◎They can change structures according to the weather and the wearer's need. So the shoes would become a pair of shoes that people can wear it for the whole year and under any occasion.

◎They can enhance the human body abilities. This means that the shoes can make the wearer run faster, jump higher, or even can help people fly.


These ideas sounds simple, but I am not sure whether they will work or not. I'll divide these ideas to more detailed things tomorrow. And I'll upload some of sketches as well.

Project 3 - Embodiment - Project Diary: Day 1

Alright, I just decided to start this project diary to keep myself on track.

Here is what I come up with for the day:

For the project, I choose to do some kind of "sci-fi" shoes that have some special functions.

I did a painting of a part of a sci-fi high heel last year, so I decided to make such a series of sci-fi shoes, or say, future shoes.

However, I am not sure whether to stay with high heels this time since I really don't know much things about high heels...So I'm still seeking for the basic shoe model to work on! 

I found the Mercury shoe pretty interesting and pretty similar to what I have paint in the past. However, wings may not be appropriate, so I need to find a alternate design.    

Furniture modeling