Throughout the year I have been collecting a vast amount of information about music and sound and its affect on us humans.
I was then eager to use it, to create something productive out of it, but didn't know what. I have been referred by a friend to the book 'The Design of Future Things' by Donald A. Norman.
In his book Norman is talking about the importance of sound in the communication between man and object. When reading the book I found an interesting quote by the psychologist J.C.R Licklider who attempt to determine how people and machines could interact gracefully and harmoniously:
“We need more natural form of interaction, an interaction that can take place subconsciously, without effort, whereby the communication in both directions is done so naturally, so effortlessly, that the result is a smooth merge of person and machine, jointly performing a task”
I decided to adopt this quote as my new brief. I tried to think how can I implement brief using the knowledge I acquired. I have come up with three main propositions for design, Each of the propositions are unique and has its own advantages and disadvantages:
Object communicate as humans: I wanted to explore how well we communicate with our objects and vise versa if they were to sound like people.
Objects communicate through music: Design object, which will communicate with music. In this proposition I can use the voluble information I have been collecting about music and implement it on the man-machine interaction. This proposition will force the design to be well considered in terms of form, material and especially function. The object will be added another use, which is to communicate with the user through music.
Amplified Objects: There is so much information held within the sound of an object. What would happen if we could hear the way the object function better? Would we understand how it works better? Would we know how to operate it better? Will we design it differently? I believe that listening to the object will allow users and designers understand the object better, its materiality, its function, its strength and weaknesses.
