Overview
Interactive Voices is an exploration of the meaningful integration
of sound, movement and interactivity. The student will create an work of sound art and present it within an interactive 2D animated interface.
Assignment:
Part 1 Sound Design: Create a sound art piece representing a theme of your choice. The sounds should suggest emotion to the viewer and be conceptually unified. Your sound design may consist of one large layered arrangement that will play out by itself, or it might consist of numerous smaller individual sounds that would be triggered by user interaction.
The sound should vary or fluctuate to represent
interaction, tension, and resolution, according
to your theme. These sounds should be textured, modified, manipulated, accentuated and
layered.
Your sound should be engaging and evocative, a work of art in and of itself. It should be able to function without any visual support.
Part 2 Time-based Visual Interface: Once the sound design is complete, create a 2D interactive animated interface in response to your sound art, within which the sound will be presented. Color, texture, compositional elements, line, and motion should relate thematically to the sounds they accompany.
Over time or with interactive feedback, change composition, rhythm, speed, repetition,
scale, rotation, position, color, opacity, balance, and perspective so that
the
objects move and evolve as the soundscape
progresses.
At a minimum, interactivity will consist of a start button to begin playback of the audio and animation of the interface. More advanced interaction will allow the viewer to mouse-over areas of the interface and trigger sounds or other visual events in a non-linear manner.
Content:
The
content of the project is entirely at your discretion,
and
the aural and visual elements may be objective or non-objective. Sound sources may be found online, sampled from audio CDs, or recorded by you. Visual elements may be taken from parts of paintings or other images, or may be created from scratch. What
is most important is that the sounds interact meaningfully with the appearance and movement of the
visual objects.
Avoid using simple
narrative. Do not approach the project as a music video or cartoon. Rather than telling a story, try to create an abstract experience. Think of this as poetry, rather than prose.
Use and explore the non-melodious qualities of sound (pitch, rhythm, tempo, amplitude, texture, tonality) to create harmony, dissonance or cacophony. Do not use any unmodified recorded music.
You may sample a piece of music to extract a certain sound, but
it
must be heavily manipulated and/or combined with other sounds
in order to remove the original "baggage" of the source.
Requirements
• Proposal Consultation:, discuss your theme and an outline of your
ideas.
• Sound Design Critique: present your audio
work in progress.
• Interface Critique: present your interface
work in progress, with sound and enough animation/interactivity to get your message across.
• Final Submission: Upload your .fla file to CourseWork. Post your .swf file on your Web portfolio, accompanied by proper credits listing
the title of the piece, if any, and the origins of
any appropriated source material.
Audio requirements:
Stereo or mono, between 20 and 40 seconds in length (total experience time)
Audio montage must contain at least 4 individual source sounds, either recorded by you, sampled from CD or video, or downloaded from the Internet.
The audio may be imported into Flash as a single file, or as separate components to be synchronized with other events.
Flash requirements:
640 x 480 pixels maximum
size, 12
frames per second.
A minimum amount of interactivity must allow the viewer to start the movie from a stop action. More advanced interactivity will contain buttons and rollover effects to trigger sound and other animated elements.
Grading
This project will be graded on (in order of importance):
• creative and effective approach to your subject matter
• demonstration
of technical proficiency with audio processing and Flash
procedures
• fulfillment of project requirements
• effective
visual and oral presentation of solution (critique is in 2 parts - audio and interface)
• involvement in
group critique
• punctuality
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