Tuesday, September 23, 2008

How it all Began

The origins of our design concept are a bit strange, I was working on a musical project and decided to take a short break, so I took off my headphones, set them on my leg, and forgot about them. A few moments later I felt a faint intermittent buzzing sensation and realized I hadn’t paused the music. I’d been working on an electronic track, and the kick drum was sufficiently loud to the point that it caused noticeable vibrations. I had a flash of insight, and picked my headphones back up. I tried placing them on my arm, then my neck, then on my face. I closed my eyes for a while and was able to figure out what section of the song I was listening to based on the vibrations. I was literally feeling the music, in the tactile sense of the word. I experimented with a few more songs, and texted a few of my friends about my discovery. They probably thought I was crazy… I thought, “This is cool.”

I sketched an idea for a set of wearable vibrating pads in my notebook, and approached a few people with the idea. I was working on a project with Devin Kerr, an alumi of the Performing Arts Technology program; He had a firm grasp of microcontrollers and had spent time working at a hearing research lab. He pointed me towards the Arduino unit, which facilitates creative interaction with electronic hardware.

I still didn’t know nearly enough about signal processing to know how to build the hardware, but I knew I’d want to access individual frequency regions and send them to separate vibrating pads, which meant I’d need to employ a mathematical process known as an FFT. It seemed like this could potentially have an amazing effect.

I held a number of discussions with Dan Budai, a PAT major and Electrical Engineer with some serious DSP chops. He helped me wrap my head around the FFT, and pointed me towards some code for the Arduino. Then, out of the blue, I opened my email inbox one day and was hit with the following subject line:

Design Competition to enable the deaf to "feel" the music”

Was this for real? Had someone been reading my notes? I looked into the details and couldn’t believe what I was reading. This design competition was the perfect chance to turn this idea into a reality. Unfortunately, neither Dan nor Devin could be a part of the team, as they were no longer students at the University. I sent out an email to the Performing Arts Technology department, and was absolutely floored by the responses I received. Not only are these individuals knowledgeable in the field, they are extremely interested in the idea, and highly motivated to boot. Team Thumping Threads consists of:

Robert Alexander – M.A. Media Arts, Second Year

Chris Conover - Junior (PAT B)

Rishi Daftuar – Senior (PAT – D / Electrical Engineering)

Stewart Randolph – Senior (PAT B)

Matt Rose – Sophomore (PAT D / Computer Engineering)

I couldn’t ask for a better team. Matt and Rishi have begun conducting extensive research into the digital signal processing aspect of the project, during any given meeting they can be found experimenting with the arduino, or gathered around a computer science textbook. Stewwie, who is a PAT major by day and fashion designer by night, has begun working on a design for the jacket, I've never seen anyone fill up pages in a sketchbook so fast. Chris and myself are prone to intense brainstorming sessions as to the future direction of the project, he's kept the big picture in focus at all times by managing a timeline and flowchart. I need to watch myself when discussing a piece of software that might be helpful for the project, he just might pick it up and learn it in a few hours.

These past few months have been exciting. We initially believed the September 18th meeting was the halfway point, it turned out to be the launch meeting. In that sense we're a bit ahead of the curve, however, our design idea is ambitious and we can't really afford to be anywhere else. Every meeting has been full of ups and downs. We've been known to make a huge technological breakthrough and stumble across a completely unexpected pitfall all within the space of ten minutes. With months to go until the final prototype is due, we're running on all cylinders. Check back for updates.

-Rob

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Up and Running

Hi. We're a team for the Feel The Music design competition sponsored by the Deaf Performing Artist network in conjunction with several departments at the University of Michigan. The competition is focused on the idea of creating a new way to experience music, and the sonic world. Anything is valid, from a light board that spits out RGB values in response to the Beastie Boys, to a cotton candy machine that mixes food coloring based on consonance in classical music. Our team has decided to design a vest with an array of built in vibrating pads that respond to environmental sounds. Such a device will be seamlessly integrated and self powered such that it can be worn inconspicuously to any venue.