Our project’s name is “A Melody Interactive Installation”.
We intend to create a project that has the flowers as the carriers. When users interact with flowers, then music will be played. When music is playing, we will edit the certain code in the processing so that users will have both vocal and visual experience. The focus of this project, from my perspective, is the sound part. We plan to use the traditional Chinese chimes which are also called ‘Bian Zhong.” In order to match the collective identities that bianzhong has, we will make the water lilies to carry the sound devices. In order to create more fun, I hope that we can add more contemporary elements, hence, I decide to add some animal sounds, such as roar. This will be a hidden treasure in this project. However, this idea is still under-discussed.
For the plan to finish our project, we plan to collect materials we need this week. So we can start doing the handwork next week. If the plan goes as we expected, we will start working on the code by the end of next week. We hope for the final project, we can be able to finish it earlier so that there is more time for us to fix the non-satisfying part of it.
I and my partner are not originally planning to elaborate with each other. We did our research separately, however, we both were interested in the music and sound. The project called Akousmaflore that I found about music and plant is very similar to the one that my partner found. We both want to work on a project which combines the art of the sound with some natural elements. After all the research and preparation, I think the two-way communication that i have been looking for should be more specific. Hence, I replace the other part of the communicator with the carriers of natural, zoetic, or at least something that is connected with living beings. This is why we pick animal sounds and chimes as the final embodiment of our project. Since for animal sounds, it is easy to trigger the imaginary two-way communication process for users. Instead of using electronic sound like the buzzer, we choose chimes which have strong historical characteristic and specific collective value. This is also something that has its own life and is able to share the collective memory with. I hope that our project can create a circumstance which let users feel a specific atmosphere. I hope that the interaction of our project can include the atmosphere that it creates. The symbols that we insert in this project will have a different influence on people who are familiar with this traditional Chinese instrument and people who are not. By playing with this, I hope that people can have another way to have a little bit of taste of Chinese music, and this will be the further steps that we plan to take.