Strings! Balls!

Still hard at work with the processing bits, got a lot of work done today. The latest sketch fires small, white balls from the strings. The harder you pick the string, the faster the ball is shot out from it. Crazy motion going on! I set it up to trigger sounds whenever a ball hits the boundaries of the screen, as well as when the string is picked. Makes for an interesting soundscape too! (Almost like: "Sprooo-plink-plinkety-plink-pli-SPROOO-plicka-plick-plink".)

The program is starting to get game-like qualities, and is certainly engaging to play with. The way I see it working is that each ball will be connected to the string that "gave birth" to it. When its "mother string" is picked, the ball grows a little. When it has grown enough, it becomes light enough to lift off from the ground. The inflated balls (now balloons) rise to form a cloud of sorts. One of these balloons eventually grows into the kaleidoscope, but beware of inflating it too much, or it will explode. If you don't keep picking the strings, it will shrink away. This way, it becomes a balancing game to keep your kaleidoscope "alive".

Now, before you start bombarding me with critique or new ideas, let me try this out (I'm nearly there, guys) and we'll see how it works.

Sorry there's no sound in the video, I had no means to record that with. Oh, and it seems the framerate's a bit messed up, it runs twice as fast as in the video.

For the sound gang - We will need the following types of sounds:

• String picks: Short attack, medium sustain
  
• Ball collisions: Very short, brittle
• Kaleidoscope growth: Long drone (Solaris?)
  
• Kaleidoscope explosion: Destruction!

Visual (web) identity Light&Darkness+music&inspiration

Trying to work further on with the page; as for now it looks like it'll become a simple presentation-site, though I'll try and make it more like a gallery where you "browse through time" or through the work (or muses?) of your fellow students.. Trying to get the framework together while sort of making up content as I go. (Do drop by and fill me in if you get ideas on how this can be solved elegantly and fun.)

Experience prototype tested!

I was doubting how far we would get today. But starting at 1330 or something like that, after the visit to Nobel peace center we made in 1,5 hours an experience prototype that gave a good insight into our project. That is really good progress. Plucking the strings (on our mock up 1:1 harp) gave a surprisingly good feel when viewing a manual processing sketch displaying in front of you.



Everyone should try it, because you automatically get ideas on how the visual response could be. What would plucking the harp soft/hard, fast/slow, one/chords look like, hear like, feel like?

And, please sketch ideas for the physical part of the harp over the weekend! We need to start to build that on Monday/Tuesday. The current prototype is 200 cm high and 80-120 cm wide. The image input is a bit diffuse right now, so pitching ideas for the general approach to this part is welcomed.


Jørn playing the harp in his head.