I finally managed to get my project finished and sorted out a few of the problems i was having. The presentation went pretty well, i managed to get across the reasoning and research behind my project. I also ran the app and had a few very abstract conversations in front of everyone. There are a few key areas that i would need to improve on if i was to take this further. Firstly, i used [recod~] and the [buffer~] object and then wrote the buffer contents to disk. I could have [...]

A few weeks back i ordered a usb number pad, along with a usb voip handset. This was to help simulate the effect of a telephone, with the idea of somehow integrating it using my sketchy electronics knowledge into an actual telephone. After a disappointing trawl of the local charity shops yesterday to find a nice classic 1970’s retro phone i cracked and ended up heading over to Argos. Credit to them, i picked up a perfectly working new house telephone for £4.99. Sweet!

Mind, it was only perfectly working for a [...]

My patcher is now nearly completed. It is looking pretty complicated (click the thumbnail for a closer look!). Having now played with it quite a bit it works really well, achieving most of the aims i set out to explore. It allows any user to have a conversation with users in the past. The samples selected at random create a disjointed and abstract conversation which provokes the user into many different responses. The strength of the experience is really based on the content that gets recorded. To help stimulate [...]

This fairly rock and roll sounding header reflects the intense sessions i have been spending in the labs at uni. I have pretty much been the last to leave in the evening along with my colleague Ben Reynhart, getting kicked out by the security guards. I have been plowing ahead with my patcher making great progress. Over the past couple of days i have integrated some key elements into my patcher. The first of these is the implementation of the playback once the user has finished talking. I have used a period of hangover time, the inspiration for which came [...]

I am really pleased with my progress over the last few days. I have been spending all my time in the Labs at uni working in Max/MSP. I have been building some of the core functionality of my application. One of the difficulties i have had is writing the contents of a [buffer~] object automatically with a dynamic url. Essentially a write message connected to a buffer will bring up a save file option. Saving a file automatically with no need for the user to get involved has been a bit [...]

Having spent some time playing with buffers, microphones and the [record~] object in Max/MSP, i have got a patcher that records speech through a microphone, which can then be played back to listen to using a [groove~] object. However, trawling the internet once more, i discovered this range of Max/MSP patchers and externals by a guy who calls himself Snot Wong.

The one in particular that grabbed my attention was the auto talker backer, which plays back your speech as soon as you stop talking into [...]

I have been searching around for various sound projects which i could use as inspiration for my own. I stumbled across this interesting installation by Mohri Yuko. It is an exploration of speech degrading over time. It uses two computers which have speech synthesis and speech recognition software. A piece of text is read out by the first machine, which is then analysed by the second machine and read out again.

The first machine then picks up this speech, analyses it and reads it out and so on, creating a continuous loop. Over time [...]

Right, with the sound module approaching, i have realised that a lot of my efforts have been focused towards the gaming module. This has spurred me on, as there is only a few weeks left. I have therefore decided to alter my original idea from using telephone speech to create abstract noises to explore the format of phone conversation itself.

I first thought of exploring the notion of speech recognition and triggering responses based on what users were saying. I decided against this, partly because it was clunky, and also because i wanted to employ a more exploratory and abstract [...]

My research for my dissertation has been heavily focused on the origins of communicative media, such as the electric telegraph and the telephone. The idea of the telephone as a decentralised means of communication is something that grabbed my attention, particularly for this project. As this is a sound module, i want to explore the sounds and speech made on the telephone, maybe using speech to create generative music of some kind. Im not entirely sure where this is going, but im going to sit on it for a while until something [...]

Well, my original idea for the sound module was to create a rubix cube style sound sequencer, with a different instrument on each face. However, since creating my sound max app, i have become rather attached to using video in some aspect of my project. Drawing on two themes from the max app, video distortion and attempting to unsettle the user, i have been playing around with the following.

My idea centers around the model of a phone kiosk you would likely find at a train station or [...]

I have left this a little late, but have been enjoying taking some time off from work over christmas. I realised i had not posted about the completion of my Jitter patch. My Max/MSP Jitter app ended up working really well. We had to present to the rest of the class.

I managed to get my voice splitting the live webcam feed into a number of vertices which would spread and shatter the louder your voice went. The pitch of the users voice controls the distortion of the texture on each vertice, allowing vocal control over two variables.

To make this application [...]

I have been playing around rather heavily with max/msp for the sound applet hand-in in a few days. Having focused a lot on sound for the games module, i decided to focus on video, and using jitter. Jitter basically deals with video, 3d and matrixes. I have found it to be thoroughly confusing and complex yet i can really see the power of the jitter objects available.

As always with Max, if what your trying to do isn’t covered in a tutorial, then your basically left to fumble around aimlessly scrolling through [...]

Well, i managed to get my first sound project completed and handed in yesterday in good time. I went for a relatively grungy feel to the piece, as the clip we had to make a score for was filled with a lot of intense action which i wanted to reflect.

The main part of my audio was created with my guitar, which i then duly tweaked, reversed, cut up and distorted till i was happy with it. I found a really good grungy drum loop, which added a nice weight to the audio. [...]

I have started work on my sound project, in later this week. The brief is to create a score to a short movie clip. We have each been assigned a movie clip from the Manga version of 1920’s movie Metropolis.

I have decided to incorporate musical elements into my score, and gradually build up the tension, as my clip ends with the young boy rescuing the girl from the machine, so it the clip reaches a natural climax which i want to exploit.

Im using a program called Magix Music Maker. Although [...]

I am now getting stuck in to max/msp, fiddling around with pitch and mic inputs for our games module. It seems that the possibilities of this program are pretty much endless. If you can envision something sound related, chances are you can probably build it in Max/MSP.

While postponing all the important stuff i should be doing and instead browsing on YouTube, i came across a touch screen 16 step sequencer. It looks like wicked fun, and offers pretty comprehensive control over the audio, have a look here.

Being a big fan of [...]