Sound Wall
Our idea was to create an interactive digital instrument with 3d parametric design tools. It allows multiple users to interact with it through pressing a key and activating the balls, initiating the flow of balls dropping down to the flat plane and creating various musical notes.
1. Pressing a button or a key generates a ball.
2. A ball is generated and starts dropping according to gravitational force and bouncing against the sound-generating surface.
3. More balls, more sounds. Less balls, less sound.
Process
In order to execute the effect of balls dropping and the sound as they bounce against the surface, we tried several approaches. First technique was manually calculating how objects behave when they fall and bounce with the effect of gravity.
We also experimented with other graphical representations of the bouncing effects
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Tools: Grasshopper, C#, Code Generator
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Iteration 2: Grasshopper, C#, Kangaroo, Mosquito, Arduino
In our second version, we focused on both rendering qualities and the sound aspects of our computational design production. Using Kangaroo Plugin, we created a set of balls as well as a grid surface. The plugin had an impressive rendering quality and a bouncing effect, thus, we have played with the amount of balls and their impression while falling through the count, strength and weight parameters.
Using Mosquito and C#, we connected our planar surface to a set of sounds and initiated the bounce-sound-making alteration, allowing each ball to make a randomly generated sound according to their position in terms of where they hit the plane grid.
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We have also experimented with Arduino through connecting the design to a button, allowing potential users to experience the design in different screen display settings where there is no need to be situated in front of a keyboard-PC interface, such as projection etc.
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This little experiment provides a lot of possibility of connecting digital 3d world with physical musical instruments to create an immersive auditory and visual experience.
