Tats à Rotterdam

I have found a few links about virtuality and loneliness. First this post tells about the Tamagotchis and the issues it raises for young kids. This article talks about virtual pets as a way for old people to overcome loneliness.

Here are a few ideas for a title for my work.

Raft

Nacelle

Sanctum

Haven

Rift

I have been doing a lot of thinking about the model of control (ie. the behavior) of the object. The model should meet the following objectives:

• Work within the constraints of the system
• Create a good experience of interaction
• Represent the loneliness/company-seeking agenda of the object
• Produce a variety of sounds/interactions

Different ideas

Sound is working!!! I can get input and output...

I'm now trying to somehow play with sound. I want to create the "parrot game" ie. record and playback sound. The main problem I'm facing is that the Atmega8 has only 1K RAM (and 512 bytes EEPROM). For human voice, we need at least 6kHz ie. 6000 samples/second. Let's say I don't want to use EEPROM and I have 1k memory available, this means that I can record up to...

• 1/6 second @ 8 bits
• 1/3 second @ 4 bits

I built the circuit shown on the image, with the microphone I bought for 1 Euro. I tested the microphone before btw and it seemed to be working well.

I get inputs between 506-511 from the Arduino, but still nothing really happens when I make some noise.

I just bought two of these nice mics, for 1 Euro each, at ACTION. They're unidirectional dynamic mics, 600 ohm impedance, freq. response 100-8000Hz and sensitivity -77+/-3 DB.

The most interesting part for me was "Tactics for using ambiguity" which explicitly gives "tricks" taken from the art world to be applied to design ideas.

Ambiguity of information

• Use imprecise representations to emphasize uncertainty (e.g. Mona Lisa's smile)
• Over-interpret data to encourage speculation (e.g. Picasso's Guernica, figured is blurred by overuse of lines)
• Expose inconsistencies to create a space of interpretation (e.g. once in a while, juxtapose images that have no obvious link to one another)

I've managed to get audio in and out from my laptop (playing from iTunes). I sent a post on the Arduino forum regarding this.

The main issue I have now is that the quality of sound is really bad (I mean, you can't hear what it is, it's totally distorted by noise).

That could be explained maybe by the fact that analogRead() runs at less than 1 kHz. So in the end it might be impossible to achieve something even near good.

A few weeks ago I did a prototyping experimentation that I documented on video. The idea was that I would sit inside my studio at Duende and plug two a microphone/speakers (those I found at SCRAP). The first speaker (let's call it A) would be set outside my Studio's door, with the microphone of the second device (B) clipped on it. Speaker B would be set inside the Studio, with microphone A in my hand.

I have much problem trying to get a sound signal into the Arduino. I have to say I feel a bit frustrated by this: we're getting closer to the end of the workshop and the first part of the project isn't working at all. I'm thinking about changing my sensor: audio input is fucking tricky, I realize now.