Reflections from the testing of Hitmetron and the remaking of “I am sitting in a room”

POSTED IN Installation, Reflections September 14, 2009

Hitmetron

I would like to elaborate on some topics as experienced from the testing of the original Hitmetron and Hitmetron the spatial version:

1. The difference between active and passive user generated input
2. Degree of involvement
3. Stage fright -> intimidating microphones
4. Degree of transparency in processing, layers
5. Reaching the state of Flow

1.

It is evident that the theme of passive versus active user generated input is an important consideration when designing interactive installations. The original Hitmetron was designed purely for active user generated input, whereas Hitmetron Revisited, the spatial version, was designed for both active and passive user generated input. The original Hitmetron was purely active in the sense of being an “instrument” that the user actively had to engage with. Hitmetron Revisited was active as it kept some of the same “instrument” parts (vocal microphone, “drum” in the form of a wooden box and “gong” in the form of a metal sheet) and passive with the addition of a metal sheet mic’ed up and placed on the floor by the entrance to the room so that any people entering the room would have to step on it and create sound input. I find it important to make conscious decisions as to how the input is generated as the activeness or passiveness of the input is closely linked to the degree of involvement and degree of transparency in the processing of the input.

2.

The degree of involvement, as I see it, is affected by the form of user generated input, the degree of transparency in the processing of said input and naturally by the content of the installation in itself. It is a goal when designing immersive experiences in the form of interactive installations to enable the user to reach the state of Flow. I will come back to this.

3.

Most people have a natural stage fright. They find it intimidating to be the centre of attention, especially when it comes to artistic performances such as music, theatre and film. This is something that we as designers must strive to overcome when designing immersive experiences in the form of interactive installations. To do this it is again important to bear in mind the form of input and the degree of transparency in the processing of the input.

4.

The pitfall when being considerate of people’s stage fright is that the whole experience can become rather flat and uninteresting. We can remedy this by tweaking the degree of transparency in processing of the input to increase the level of involvement in the installation. It is important that the users get a feel of what they contribute to the installation without crossing the line to exhibiting them. One way this can be done is by combining multiple layers of input and/or processing. There must be at least one level of more or less direct feedback, but several other layers can be added where the input in no necessarily coherent way is played back. This ensures that the users aren’t alienated from the piece, but still opens up for endless artistic expressions.

5.

When creating immersive experiences the concept of Flow, as proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, is important to bear in mind. Flow is the mental state of operation in which the user is fully immersed in the activity at hand, enhancing the sense of focus, involvement and success. This must be the ultimate goal when designing interactive installations, especially when the installation is an active one in form of input.

I am sitting in a room

I chose to do a remake of Alvin Lucier’s “I am sitting in a room” for a few reasons: to explore the impact of acoustics on sound, to explore the relation between sound input and sound output, to sensitize myself to sound as an artistic expression (not as a musician) and to familiarize myself with an old masterpiece.

The original piece is a recording of Alvin Lucier’s voice reading:

I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in
now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am
going to play it back into the room again and again until
the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves
so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the
exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will
hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the
room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not
so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as
a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might
have.

The recording is played back while it is recorded. This new recording is then played back and recorded, and the process is repeated until satisfied.

I used AT&T’s voice emulator to generate the starting vocal track. I chose to do it this way to remove any personal characteristics in the voice (you can argue that that the voice still has a strong personality, but it is clearly a machine and not a human being) so that the characteristics of the rooms would be at centre stage.

Acoustics

I used two different rooms to be able to compare their impact on the piece. First I ran through the piece in an auditorium, and then I did the same thing with exactly the same settings in a meeting room. The rooms were very different in their impact on the sound. I talked to a friend of mine who is a sound technician who mentioned how different rooms have different degrees of saturation, the point where it is impossible to amplify sound further without it peaking and becoming an incoherent mass. This is quite clear in the meeting room where after only a few iterations the higher frequencies peak while the lower tones are still quite clear. After these experiments it is evident that the room a sound installation is presented in is an important part of the result, not only visually.

Sound input versus sound output

It was a fantastic experience to follow the transformation of a clear spoken text into a piece of space evoked noise music, solely through the use of playback and recording and playback again. Unfortunately no video or recording can give justice to the quality of the sound live. It has to be experienced. Such an easy concept has great possibilities. I definitely confirmed that great experiences can be created by simple means.