Anknüpfend an die erste Simulation werde ich eine zweite, ausgefeiltere Erstellen. Mithilfe des Programmes SoundParticles werden wieder 50 3D-Objekte im vorgefertigten Raumverteilt und durch sorgfältiges einstellen der Parameter eine Schwarmdynamik erzeugt. Das Produkt daraus wird nun in 4th-order Ambisonic gerendert und ausgegeben. Das so entstandene File importiere ich in Reaper um mit der IEM – Plugin Suite (Scene Rotator, Binaural Decoder) eine authentische Kopfbewegung zu realisieren. Das dadurch entstandene Produkt soll als Anhaltspunkt für die folgende, interaktive Installation gelten.
Es die Sounds können beliebig gewählt werden von natürlich bis abstrakt. Für diese Aufnahme habe ich in “Serum” wieder 7 leicht unterschiedliche Soundfiles erstellt, die zusammen den Flug von mehreren Maschinen mit Rotoren oder großen Insekten nachahmen sollten.
Des Weiteren wurde, zur besseren Veranschaulichung, eine binaurale (also bitte mit Kopfhörern wiedergeben) Bildschirmaufnahme des Programmfensters erstellt.
Since I rely a lot on self-recorded samples, I wanted to use this opportunity to re-sample my cajon (a Schlagwerk CP-4011). Cajons seem to be rarely used in a sampled manner, since they mostly give the benefit of transportability compared to a drum set. However, I really like the intimate sound, which makes it a great add-on in projects that require a special non-commercial percussive touch. The outcome should be an extensive sample library that I can make into a digital instrument, which creates an intimate and acoustic vibe that makes musical pieces sound more like recordings than just samples in a sequencer.
It was difficult to find a reference track that captures what I wanted my samples to sound like, since different cajons, like most other musical instruments can sound extremely differently. Additionally, compared to other instruments, there is only a small amount of material available on the internet. However, in the following video, I like the vibe and how full the cajon’s bass sounds while still providing a very crisp upper end of the spectrum.
Durch die Verwendung von Kopfhörern eignet sich ein binauralen Ausgabeformats. Mithilfe der beiden Programme Fmod und Resonance Audio lässt sich in Unity vergleichbar einfach eine binaurale Ausgabe ermöglichen. Dazu werden zwei Plugins benötigt:
-Resonance Audio Source
Spatsialisiert Mono-Quellen rund um die HörerInnen
Fügt Effekte wie die Dämpfung sich entfernender Schalquellen oder Richtcharakteristiken hinzu
-Resonance Audio Listener
Ermöglicht binaurale Spatsialisierung von Quellen, die mit dem RASource erstellt wurden und verarbeitet die Simulation von Raumeffekten
(Zwischen diesen beiden Plugins können noch weitere Effekte zwischengeschaltet werden.)
RASource encodiert simultan hunderte Mono-Quellen in bis zu third order Ambisonics und spatsialisiert anschließend die Summe, anstatt “kostenaufwändig” jede einzelne Quelle binaural zu rechnen, mit dem RAListener. So kann auch auf mobilen Geräten (–>Tablet) eine hochauflösende Wiedergabe ermöglicht werden Um eine realistische Interaktion von Schallwellen mit unseren Ohren und Objekten zu simulieren, verwendet Resonance Audio HRTFs. Die natürliche Bewegung des Kopfes, die uns hilft relative Änderungen der Audioposition wahrzunehmen, kann getrackt werden. Ein weiteres Plugin mit dem Namen Resonance Audio Soundfield reagiert auf die Daten der getrackten Kopfbewegungen und behält die relative Position der Schallquelle im Klangraum bei, indem die Ambisonics-Szene genau in die gegengesetzte Richtung der Kopfbewegung der BesucherInnen gedreht wird.
Reflexionen und Hall:
Resonance Audio verfügt über eine eingebaute Reverb-Engine, die den Klang verschiedenster Räume und deren Oberflächenreflexionen genau nachbilden kann.
Wenn die Größe des Raums oder die Oberflächenmaterialien der Wände geändert werden, reagiert die Reverb-Engine in Echtzeit und passt die Schallwellen an die neuen Bedingungen an. Dies geschieht über ein Feedback Delay Network (FDN). Ein FDN-Reverb bringt im Gegensatz zu einem Faltungshall (mit langen Impulsantworten und higher-order Ambisonics) wieder den klaren Vorteil der Rechenleistungsersparnis.
Verdeckung und Richtung:
Um die Immersion zu erhöhen, kann Resonance Audio auch simulieren, wie Schallwellen, die sich zwischen Quelle und Hörer ausbreiten, durch dazwischenliegende Objekte blockiert werden. Diese Verdeckungseffekte werden simuliert, indem hohe und tiefe Frequenzkomponenten getrennt verarbeitet werden. Hohe Frequenzen werden stärker verdeckt als tiefe Frequenzen, wodurch die realen Gegebenheiten nachgeahmt werden.
Die Software kann ebenso die Richtcharakteristik einer Quelle ändern und die natürliche, ungleichmäßige Schallabstrahlung realer Quellen nachahmen. Dies kann beispielsweise bei stationäre virtuellen Quellen in der Game-Engine hilfreich sein. Es können hier zwei Parameter für die Richtwirkung, konfiguriert werden:
Alpha: Stellt die Form der Patterns dar. Es kann zwischen Kardiod-, Kreis- oder Achterformen gewählt werden.
Ein Sampler war als Preset im der PD-Library vorhanden und war mit ein paar wenigen Änderungen an meine Wünsche angepasst. Die Sampler-Recherche inspirierte mich weniger als sie mich abschreckte davor, wie viele verschiedene Ausführungen und Arten von Samplern seit den 80ern gebaut wurden. Da würde es schwierig werden etwas außergewöhnliches erschaffen zu können, und Workflow-technisch ist man mit einer MPC wahrscheinlich nach wie vor bestens aufgestellt beim Bauen von Beats.
Eine weitere Durststrecke tat sich auf, während der mir Fiebertraum-artig immer wieder nur die Foley App vor dem inneren Auge erschien. Meiner Crew dürstete es bereits nach einem Ziel und es wurde langsam unruhig an Bord, da das Erreichen des Nächsten Semester-Hafens nicht allzu weit in der Zukunft lag.
Es nutzte nichts. Die nächste Idee befand sich nun auf der Planke und ich machte mich so schnell es geht ans Ruder, um es rumzureißen und zurück Richtung Foley-App zu steuern. Dies musste ich nur noch meinem treuen Betreuer erklären, der mir während der Änderung meiner Pläne immer wieder bei stand und mir Feedback zu meinen Entscheidung gab und sehr guten Input brachte.
Betrübt über den Verlust meiner Lieblings-Idee, der Foley App, steuerte ich in Richtung Sound-Installation und begann drüber nachzudenken welches Thema ich in diesem Projekt behandeln könnte.
Ich dachte drüber nach, ein altes Kunstwerk aufzugreifen und zu verändern, bzw. mich davon inspirieren zu lassen. Während dieser Woche beschäftigten wir uns auch mit Pure Data worin ich als Hip-Hop Musikproduzent sofort einen eigenen Sampler zu basteln anfing. Die NIME-Recherche inspirierte mich ebenfalls dazu.
Als ich mitbekam, dass meine unterbewusste Crew, die sehr viel Wert darauflegt, dass Projekte praktische Verwendung finden, die sie mit mir gemeinsam als Captain umsetzen, ohne mein Kommando die Installations-Idee bereits über Board geworfen hatten, blieb mir nichts über als mich dazu zu entscheiden, dass meine neue Projektarbeit ein Sampler sein wird der bestenfalls irgendetwas kann was die andren nicht können.
_We recently started a small game called DECAY in UNITY, a horror-exploration game set in an abandoned bunker facility.
_While we were hard at work building the game, we thought about implementing future, rather simple accessibility options; like making collectibles easier to see and find, adding an optional item counter to help you keep track of your needed collectibles and maybe some kind of colorblind mode (yet we weren’t sure how to implement such a feature in such a game with it making sense). But the easiest and nicest solution we came up with, besides a difficulty setting which would influence the time it would need for the game to result in a game over in certain moments, was the idea to optionally remove enemy encounters entirely from the game, so one could explore to their hearts content, since we poured a lot of love and detail into level itself, like little micro-narratives and so on. Finally, since the music can get creepy sometimes (as it should in a game like that) we considered if would be available to influence the game music, e.g., adjusting the volume or turning it off completely. Yet we are still on the fence on these topics, since we try to decide what is needed for our game to function in its core and what can be made more easily accessible.
When designing for medicine, the designer must be aware of various aspects of this field. He must analyze how the processes run in a particular medical institution and the first thing he must pay attention to is the medical aspects of the problem he is trying to solve. In a short time, the designer or design team must delve into the medical aspects of the prescribing problem and use three sources of information:
Visual medical information
Written medical information
Scientific medical information.
Visual medical information must be collected during the procedure the designer is investigating, such information can indirectly stimulate motivation and inspiration for superior product design. Written medical information is found mainly in brochures, through which the patient is informed about the treatment. The Internet is also an important source of information.
Scientific medical information gives state of the art research in the form of congressional reports. The designer must understand that the researcher has hidden desires that need to be found. It should be part of an open discussion with all interested parties. The designer or design team must extract all medical information to find out the requirements and wishes of all medical parties involved in the treatment and then come to the design of the product. Optimization should always be a topic of discussion to come up with the best product design. In a fuzzy interface, designs with medical information require special attention to communication between the designer and the specialist, otherwise, opportunities for optimized product design may be missed. Knowledge must be brought directly to the level of understanding and exchange of medical and technical information. Shared information must be known to all parties involved for the success of the project. Projects with medical science as their starting point require a new approach to design development.
While writing the last blog entry, I came across an issue that may turn out to be relevant to taking under consideration for answering my research question. Therefore, this blog entry serves as an “interim” post to discuss and contextualize my thoughts and, in the best case, provide scientific input.
The starting point constituted the following sentence from the article What You’re Getting Wrong About Inclusive Design I read for blog post #4: “Inclusivity. It’s one of the biggest buzzwords inside corporations right now. But the person who brought the practice of inclusive design to Microsoft-Kat Holmes-isn’t so sure that companies really get the idea yet.”
The statement above immediately started an inner discourse and ‘trains of thought’:
‘Trains of thought’:
„For topics that are socially relevant, specific terms develop in the media that stand for the "whole issue". In principle, this is a good idea, since it is easier for people to grasp something complex that has been presented in a simplified way. However, this observation seems extremely ambivalent to me. As much as umbrella terms emerge to take up important social issues, summarize them and make them accessible, they abstract the substance behind the actual issue. This is furthered by the inflationary use of those terms. Polarization occurs very quickly. Either everyone wants to adorn themselves with the feathers or is reluctant to put them on.
This can be seen very well with the term sustainability. Everyone knows very well that sustainability is important. Due to the inflationary use of the word, one reads about sustainability everywhere. From it two groupings developed. Those who have integrated sustainability into their lives and are convinced of its importance, and those who exploit sustainability by using it as a marketing strategy (keyword greenwashing within companies). It becomes intangible to the gross consumer as all is sustainable without communicating exactly how and why. This fosters that people can no longer relate to the topic, because it has become too general and it might causes anger that „suddenly everything has to be sustainable“, and if „I am not as sustainable as possible I am less worth“, whereby also fear of change plays a role. A similar problem takes place with inclusive design relating to this excuse of issue addressing in society and media. Everything has to be inclusive, because it is socially important to think inclusive / to be diverse.“
Trains Of Thought — Mood
These ‘trains of thought’ were the starting point of the considerations after which I did my further research on buzzwords.
Buzzwords
In fact, in many areas the problems of buzzwords are discussed and in many cases there is a political and economic factor that cannot be denied. The digital research shows that the topic around buzzwords, took place 5-10 years ago and only little current reports or statements can be found. However, the content is in keeping with the times.
In a dossier by Thomas Niehr published on the website of the German Federal Agency for Political Education in 2010 it was demonstrated that buzzwords are an excellent linguistic instrument for implementing strategies because they can be used to influence people’s thoughts and feelings.
Thus, the language strategy usually consists of strengthening one’s own position while devaluing that of the opponent. To get an approximate idea of the strategic impact of buzzwords, one needs to know who has used that buzzword in public discourse and in what way. This is especially true for buzzwords that are used to refer to controversial political ideas. Especially in public debate buzzwords are used to propagate certain demands and programs.
On the one hand, when a buzzword hits the zeitgeist and the program it contains finds many supporters, the so called “battle for words” sets in: Different groups will try to pass off the buzzword as their own, to “occupy” the buzzword for themselves. On the other hand, buzzwords are evaluated very differently depending on one’s views. For some, their association might be very positive, for other it is a synonym for the exact opposite. A distinction is therefore made between positive buzzwords and fighting- or stigma-words. The latter are used to discredit the ideas of the opponent, which is f. e. often used in political context.
Peter Josef Harr — Bedrohtes Menschsein.
What makes a word a buzzword?
It can be stated that there are no words that are buzzwords per se. Words require certain environmental conditions in order to be used as buzzwords at all. The existence of a public sphere in which buzzwords can be used and received is essential. If a demand or a program becomes explosive in such a public and is represented by a grouping, a buzzword can emerge. In retrospect, it becomes clear that such a buzzword has emerged in public discourse and has suddenly been used very frequently. This is true, for example, of environmental protection from the 1970s onward.
Some buzzwords acquire international significance and therefore also circulate, sometimes even with a time lag in different language communities. Therefore, it makes sense to analyze other structures (Note: Shape user research internationally).
Anything that you don’t want to implement for its own sake, but for an image, cannot work in my opinion.
Which leads to my conclusion that the Establishment of UX can not be driven by a specific terminology or buzzword like „Establishing UX“ rather by an unconscious process combined with political support, otherwise change will not be possible.
The questions I’m asking myself now are: Do I need buzzwords to establish a new approach to UX? Do I even need to get rid of them to make it work? And if I use some buzzwords, how dangerous or essential could they become to the process of establishment?
Buzzwords that came to my mind during research and that I recently encounter in everyday life:
Big Data Covid19 Commitment Diversity Foreigners Feminist Innovation Sustainability (derived from buzzword „environmental protection“)
Source: https://www.bpb.de/politik/grundfragen/sprache-und-politik/42720/schlagwoerter?p=0 Thomas Niehr (1993): Schlagwörter im politisch-kulturellen Kontext. Zum öffentlichen Diskurs in der BRD von 1966 bis 1974. Wiesbaden. Thomas Niehr (2007): “Schlagwort”. In: Ueding, Gert (Hrsg.): Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, Bd. 8. Tübingen, Sp. 496-502. https://www.creativejeffrey.com/creative/buzzwordproblem.php?topic=creativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzzword https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/40-buzzwords-that-make-smart-people-sound-stupid-most-overused-corporate-jargon.html Harr, Peter Josef. Bedrohtes Menschsein. Eine kritische Analyse unserer Gesellschaft unter dem Aspekt der Liebe. Lit Verlag. Berlin, 2009. S.87 Buzzword Innovation — article: „Moving beyond buzzwords.“ by Dov Greenbaum and Markk Gerstein 2 books reflecting on society’s semantic station with „innovation“. In both books innovation was stated out as a term that has been reduced to a buzzword. Both books are valuable in forcing us to appreciate what is truly valuable to society. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abd9805
So there is a multitude of values to be extracted to pick up a musician’s expression in performance. If the music is written down, some of it is readable by the sheet music. Some of it however is an individual expression of the musician. which is far more abstract in character and much more difficult to pick up because it is not possible to predefine it or calculate it. So we have to quantize expression somehow directly from the performance. Clemens Wöllner suggests in his opinion article to quantify artistic expression with averaging procedures.
A big point of the expression is to raise the attractiveness of the musical piece one is playing to a point to make it one’s own in the sense of the performance. Individuality is highly valued in the expression of a performer. Cognitive psychology studies teach us that average modalities in visual and auditory modalities are viewed as more attractive. Averaging procedures typically produce very smooth displays in pictures and sound. Listeners of performance typically expect more from a concert or a recording than an even performance. As said individuality is highly appreciated in music.
In classical genres, expression is often added by subtle timing perturbations and fluctuations in dynamic intensity, as unexpected delays or changes in intensity that are different from the typical expectations of the listener can cause surprise and other emotional reactions and thus help the individual performer’s musical expression. In earlier decades of the 20th century, for instance, musicians typically employed large rubati which are deviations in note length, most of the melody voice. It is not as common anymore, the changes of note length are far smaller today. Research along these lines has for a long time studied expressive timing deviations from a non-expressive metronomic version. These timing deviations constitute an individual expressive microstructure. As performers are not able to render a perfect mechanical, metronomically exact performance. To quantify those timing variations using a so-called deadpan rendition as average, can not be a valid indicator of individuality.
So musical performances can be averaged according to the main quantifiable dimensions of duration, dynamic intensity, and pitch. As for the average performance, it was suggested in seminal studies 1997 by Repp that the attractiveness is raised by not deviating from the average, expected performance, but it is also considered a dull performance if there is no individuality in it by straying from the average.
Averaged deviations from the notated pitch in equidistant temperament could be analyzed. The sharpening or flattening of tones may reveal certain expressive intentions of individual performers. Also, musicians are able to shape the timbre of certain instruments to some extent which adds to their expression.
What hardware microcontrollers and DSP chips are readily available to power the Interface module? That is a central question to start working on ways to implement MIR algorithms into a module. The second question is what code language is compatible with the chips and how can one implement it.
Those questions are examined in a paper by the International Conference on New Interface for Musical Expression (short NIME) named: „A streamlined work ow from Max/gen~ to modular hardware“ by Graham Wakefield, 2021 which focuses on the oopsy workflow which streamlines digital sound processing algorithms to work with the modular synthesizer environment.
As microcontrollers such as Arduino and Teensy get more powerful by the day they are more and more useful for musicians and luthiers to use in music and musical instruments. The play to make electronic music live and without a laptop that would run a DAW is a strong motivation for musicians to get into coding and learn to develop equipment which is providing often the few tools a DAW is offering them for live performances.
For DSP chips to read code programmed in a visual language like Pure Data or Max MSP the patch most of the time has to be compiled into C++. Within Max, there is for instance the [gen~] object which is capable of doing so. To implement the mach well into the hardware ‚oopsy‘ was developed which streamlined the workflow, to get an algorithm onto hardware, with a targeted firmware generation that is optimized for CPU usage and low memory footprint and program size, with minimal input required.
Electrosmith Daisy:
Processor: ARM Cortex-M7 STM32H750 MCU processor with 64MB of SDRAM and 8MB of
flash memory, IO: Stern, 31 configurable GPIO pins, 12x 16-bit ADCs, 2×12 bit DACs, SD Card interface, PWM outputs, micro USB port (power and data), Dasy Seed: 51×18 mm
It is a common microcontroller in Modular Synth gear today. The MCU processor is with its maximal 480MHz quite capable and the AK4556 Codec has AC-coupled converters that internally run with 32-bit floating-point. Daisy firmware can be developed using Arduino, FAUST, PureData via Heavy, as well as Max/gen~ using the Oopsy software. internal latency down to 10 microseconds.
Bela Beaglebone:
Bela is an open-source platform based on the beaglebone single-board computer design for live audio. It is compatible with Supercollider, PureData, and C++. It is optimized for ultra-low latency, with 0,5 ms it is better for desktop, cellphone, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi solutions.
IO Eurorack module: 2 audio inputs, 2 audio outputs, 5 CV inputs, 1 gate/trigger in, 1 gate/trigger out, 1 USB Type B connector
References
Graham Wakefield. 2021. A streamlined workflow from Max/gen~ to modular hardware. Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression. http://doi.org/10.21428/92fbeb44.e32fde90.
