Here is the link for our project: http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~yh3245/chemlab/
A description of the project:
We both like the combination of different sounds, so we begins with think up things can be combined with each other. Then we find out that chemical material is a good choice. And this is also inspired by Professor Didakis’s suggestion of micro-world. So we want to build a simulate chemical lab with different kinds of materials. They have their own sounds, you can play them by click the button around them and pause them by click again. You can also drag them in the equation, and then click the equal sign to make the reaction happen. And the products of the reaction will appear, and the sound of that reaction will be played.
A discussion of your process and how the project works:
This is not our original idea, the previous one is to narrate the experience of a man who works alone on the street from night to dawn. And we want to create an unique atmosphere by playing the sounds he gonna hear during his journey. We have already recorded the audio materials we need and the basic structure of the website. But it seems kind of boring and the audio is not the major part of this project, then we change our topic to our current project. So we are a little bit more about t left behind.
In this project, we do the recording work together, most of the audio materials we use are from our dorm, and others are from the streets and academic building. During that process, we found that though the preview of the records is good (when you click record only once and it is actually not recording), but the actual records is not satisfying. So we change the record set to a higher recording quality. After, that we discovers our records become much better. We have recorded the sound of the crash of the metals, sound of water, and sound by shaking a bag of rice or sugar. We also record the sound of the air (similar to the sound you can hear when you have a tinnitus), we think it is interesting and gives the listener a feeling of silence.
Then we separate our works, I do most of the coding part and she processes with the most audio materials we got and draws the image we use for our project. My partner writes the html and css of the images, putting them in right position and give the code to me. Then I work on the javascript part to fulfill the functions. I give every object a drag function and they will only be dropped to a constant position when you drag it close enough to that position. And once it is dropped to the equation, the variable of its will change in javascript. And when you click the equal sign, it will get the variable of all the chemical materials and know which reaction should be processed. And by running the reaction function, the images of the products will appear with the sound of it. And then I gave my code back to her. She add the processed audio materials into the file and do the coding part of the sounds.
I also work with some audio materials, I change the frequency of the sounds, and cut them to make them have proper starting point. I give the echo special effects to an audio. And I once put nearly all the sounds we got in order to make it sounds like a band with strange instruments. Though we did not directly use that, it is close to the situation when you click all the buttons in our website.
A post-mortem on whether or not the project met your goals:
It mostly meet our goals, but I think the elements in our project in not enough, so we cannot put more audio materials into the website.
And there are some ways we can improve:
- When you drag the images, there will be a block to show that the position you are wanted to drag the images to.
- When you click the buttons to play music, all the sounds should be played at the same rhythm. We can do this by make all the audio materials played at the same time with 0 volume before you can click those buttons, like making a introduction pre-page.
- When you try to drag the image, you may click the button over it, we may solve this by turning the image to the button.