Semester 2 - Project 1 - Concept and Development.

Today we started the final piece of the Aural terrains project. We have been asked to create either a performance or installation for an exhibition which is going to be held at the audio foundation in 2 weeks time. I was not really keen on the idea of a performance as i felt that an installation would be more interesting to develop and create and we could do something really awesome. Only problem i found with it though was the short amount of time in which we had to put something like that together. I would have much preferred to have gotten to this stage a lot earlier rather than have spent so much time with the other..... less exciting aspects of the aural terrains project. Though i knew it wasnt going to be easy i felt that i had to do my best and try hard to accomplish the task as best i could to make the last few weeks worth it.

Anyway onto the stuff your really after. I had thought about joining into a group with Lucy for a while so i decided to pair up with her and Jenna at first and a few others. This then had to change when Zoe suddenly decided to change the group numbers on us and the group became narrowed down to just Lucy, Jenna and me. I didnt really mind this so much, as both Jenna and Lucy are particularly hard workers and it encouraged me to be the same. Anyway over the first few days we spent quite a while coming up with concepts (with the more interesting ones being noted in our journals) and eventually came up with the idea of creating a modern day Nightingale Floor.

This video here is somebody's construct of a nightingale floor, in the video she has decided to use the floor like an instrument as she dances across it causing the floor to create all sorts of sounds to her movements.
The traditional Nightingale floor was an ancient Japanese security measure against assassins (particularly Ninjas).It is nearly impossible to cross this floor without creating noise due to the clever construction and design of the floor. Basically how it works is when pressure is applied to the planks special pins rub against each other, then the sound bounces around specially crafted urns set underneath the floor to create the sound of birds chirping.

In order to save time, instead of going for a more traditional approach we have decided to use piezo mics as vibration sensors that will be used to create sounds once triggered. This almost makes our floor like a giant piano only we thought that would be to literal so we are still trying to develop the idea further.