Consonance Call @ London Design Festival

Inspiration

During the lockdown, many people struggled with the impacts of living alone in a different area and having only online spaces as the intermediary for their social lives. This piece was created as an online solace and connection that we wish we could have had.

Design Highlights

This project reflects upon online social connections and dialogue. Virtual actions are not immaterial or detached from the "real" world; they have very real consequences and effects.

Co-Curation

This exhibition showcases seven group works that explore new possibilities for examining the spaces and relationships between online work and physical objects. It demonstrates the explorative and experimental attitude towards interaction design that characterizes IDC students.

As one of the three curators, I believe that all of these projects provide a glimpse into how both our own practices and the discipline of interaction design are evolving in response to the new state of the world.

Research

During the research period, our group attempted to use a vintage telephone as the foundation for the physical structure, which would guide the audience into a reunion on and off the screen during the lockdown. Our goal was to create more than virtual dialogues. We sought to effect substantive changes through the internet wires.

Conception & Workflow

In our design, we created a hybrid week-long installation that involved a modified old telephone. The telephone received calls from anonymous online visitors who could leave voice messages by using the phone or computer microphone on the project's website. The rhythmic and tonal properties of these messages were then converted into unique non-verbal sound and visual effects that manifested in the physical installation.

The gallery space was equipped with a camera that livestreamed a feed in real-time for an entire week, allowing online visitors from anywhere in the world to witness how their actions affected the installation, even from the other side of the planet. As more callers left messages, the audio and visuals constantly evolved and fed into each other, creating unforeseen connections between new voices and those that had come before.

Development of Auto-tune Method

One of my tasks was to develop an autotune function. I used Max Msp to create a process that went from a basic pitch shift to a more complicated PFFT tuning process.

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