You could hear the sound of the soul here.
Brief:
What is the sound of the soul? Why would you believe your soul’s sound could be interpreted through this project? What if it is just a random “noise” generator?
We are currently facing this kind of problem for conditional design. For example, drawing a circle and forbidding escape to demonstrate the paralyzed dilemma. However, it could be an imagination of what life is like for paralyzed people without thoughtful background research. These conditional designs try to “teach” others lacking proof and knowledge. Therefore, I designed this ritual (“Heartfelt”) to go against these common practices that were inadequately authorized.
Description (Concept Demonstration):
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. ”
– Exodus 20:3-4
“Heartfelt” is a ritual project that could detect the user’s heart rate and generate sounds and visuals accordingly. It could be seen as the sound of the soul because of its function. This project opposes conditional designs that are built without a certain research background or adequate connection between the project and the concepts. That is, before you know how “the sound of soul” works, you should first question the title and concept instead of accepting any assumption.
We face this problem a lot in the World Web as well. Receiving information on the internet could easily erase the important knower S for a proposition “S knows P” but displaying the P knowledge. This prevents us from questioning the credibility of the information, thus generating fake beliefs.
The second commandment in the Ten Commandments Decalogue regulates the form of worshiping of the Lord. It rejects Idolatry, refusing to worship any person or existence as the Lord. However, if we read this line in the context, maybe the Lord’s graven image and all the man-made gods might not be the real Lord as an unknown makes it. Truth or faith might only have one according to the first commandments, but you could question god – This might be a way to get closer to the real Lord.
In a nutshell, defective conditional design, incredible web content, and the new way of pursuing the Lord led to the project “Heartfelt”. The deeper meaning of the concept is, using epoché, your own judgments, instead of any unreliable “taught” knowledge to create your own beliefs.
The Ritual Process:
- Click the link and go to the website.
- Interact with the Patterns.
- Providing the title of the project.
- The audience guesses the link between the title and the project itself.
- Introduce the project
- Reject the concept of the project and tell the sound was generated because of randomness
The ritual concept and its process coordinate with the ritual’s routine and characteristics.
Firstly, this is a “showing of doing” that is not entirely encoded by me (the performer). The computer would generate sound in different ambient and frequencies based on the user’s heartbeat. This way, it performs an “invariant sequence” based on a rule.
In my imagination, this ritual would be performed on a “religious” occasion to keep things “right”. It stresses the difficulty and importance of seeking truth in a digital era. Use “heartfelt” to confess knowledge that you easily take without thoughtful judgments!
This bodily project alternates the normal way you admire a project that regulates the sequence, you should first test it, and then the answer is revealed, and it is reversed to evoke a thinking based on that performance. This norm helps us to reflect we might take the knowledge/proportion at first while ignoring the important source: How does this knowledge come from? In other words, it is reflexive and advocates that we should not believe “unfaithfully” and dumbly in the digital world.
Prototypes / Possibilities:
Visuals
I try to use different visuals to exhibit what the soul of sound could be like. There are variant visualizations and I plan to link the different visuals with the person’s personality.
I divided my moldboard into 4 parts: Traditional Sound Waves; Music score and body movement; Music, nature, and soul; Generative Art (I attach those files to Google Drive because they are too big to fit in WP)
Moodboard Link 
My sketches for Moodboard
Notes:
- Three elements for sounds of language: phonemes, tone and intonation, accent & rhyne
- How to transcribe language: using the IPA/ SAMPA
- Body Movement (Or generally, we could mimic heart movement) could be used as an element for visual design
- Ancient Greeks used Musica Universalis (Music of Spheres) to describe the proportions and movement of celestial bodies a form of music
Heartfelt sound – body (situatedness) – natural element - The ambient walker (technique reference| https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/magazine/10section1A.t-3.html)
How to make “music” and the UI design, and description:
Concept Illustration:
Use the Tidal (as the photo shows) – use mathematical calculation and iteration to use the lines to create a spatial feeling.
The factors would be the heartbeat sample (also including the phonemes, tone, and rhyme generated by the heartbeat)
How to Process:
1. Transcribe heartbeat to a “language”
Compare the heartbeat with the previous seconds and fetch several common patterns as phonemes. Getting some pulse pause as a basic loop for rhythm, mapping the heartbeat rate to the tone.
2. Make Language Music
Use the rhyme, phonemes, and tone to create music
3. Visualize the Music (See the visual Concept Illustration part)
Reference:
http://languagesindanger.eu/book-of-knowledge/the-sounds-of-language/
https://www.behance.net/gallery/50245379/Phontique
Sounds / Composing
Currently, the sound is quite primitive, similar to the ECG (Electrocardiogram) monitor in a hospital. There’s another project “An ambient Walkman” which might be a great technique reference for creating the chords.
Here are some composers for my reference for future development:
- Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
- Claude Debussy
- Franz Liszt
- Niccolò Paganini
- Caprice No. 24
I might also need to consider different chords and their effects.
Reflections:
There are many interesting inputs and I’d love to accumulate more ideas about the interface.