André De Pape

description

Humonolith is a connected sculpture. It embodies images and emotions extracted from the blogs of people around the world, immersing itself in sound and image, creating a new translation of the human being. Images and sentences incrementally move across a screen of a black monolith, giving a glimpse into the mood and feeling of individuals in the world. These "nodes" emphasize and evolve a growing soundscape, parsing emotions from the blog feeds into an environmental soundscape, capturing a global emotional moment via the internet. This project was made possible with the generous open project API of We Feel Fine

Interaction

Entering the room introduces the individual to a stark, black monolith, with a screen rapidly going through images with small bursts of sound.

Moving closer, the individual notices their proximity affecting the speed of the images, as well as introduces text to the screen. The closer they get, the slower it cycles through the images and text, allowing the user to read and associate meaning to the information on the screen. More words are shown the closer to the piece the user is and the sound becomes more encompassing and deep.

As they get more involved they get a more detailed account of the emotions and feelings that are being filtered in the monolith, and are able to get a truer understanding of the relationships. Bad emotions cause dissonance in the sound, while good emotions act harmoniously.

Technical Operations

Processing: Analyses XML feed from the We Feel Fine API, parses and displays images and text at a variable speed. Categorizes the incoming emotions and sends information to MAX/MSP

Arduino: Gathers information from a Ultra Sonic Range Finder and sends it to a processing patch to determine cycle speed.

Max/MSP: Deploys the information coming in from Processing into midi patches, controlling the performance of the soundscape.

Ableton Live: Performing the midi functions using synthesizers, samplers and other audio effects.

Future Considerations

For future development of the project I would create a bigger sculpture, really playing to the users relationship to the object and space. In addition i would try and develop my own source of infomation, not just using We Feel Fine, but instead extrapolating the possibilities onto new data sources.