Chen and I will continue with our project SoundSorial for our final. We have three goals for the next stage of the project.

• Revisit the form factor
• Experiment with sound and visual feedback
• Experiment with presentation/performative aspect of the piece

Progress

This week we presented SoundSorial at NYC Media Lab. We received lots of positive feedback from visitors. However, it was obvious that the form factor is a problem. It is currently too large and inflexible for all head shapes. We want to experiment with different materials and shapes.

We also connected SoundSorial to Processing, through which we can manipulate actual audio files as well as create visual feedback. This opens up many new possibilities for how we express the data we are collecting.

Eventually, we would like to make a companion app for SoundSorial that will allow the user to listen to music and podcasts as the normally would and disrupt their listening experience with static or other audio feedback when they enter an area that is above a certain level of particulate pollution.

Before we try to create an app, however, we want to explore what the possibilities of this project are. Now that we have a working prototype we want to explore the potential types of audiovisual feedback we can create, what it could look like, and how it might be presented. For example, that if SoundSorial became a performance piece?

The first prototype determined the ‘who,’ ‘what,’ and the ‘why’ of our project.  With the second stage of development we want to explore the possibilities of ‘how.’ For our final we envision presenting a series of material, visualization, and presentation experiments.