Brief
After knowing more about the discursive design, such as speculative design, we need to think about how we may to structure future-oriented, collaboration to derive new stories about the future. The material we get, will be the beginning point to start ours' discursive design.
In the first day of this workshop, we got a speaker from Tyler (Teacher of workshop) and we decided to analyse this speaker at this stage.
how speaker works
Speakers work by converting electrical energy into mechanical energy (motion). The mechanical energy compresses air and converts the motion into sound energy or sound pressure level (SPL). When an electric current is sent through a coil of wire, it induces a magnetic field. In speakers, a current is sent through the voice coil which produces an electric field that interacts with the magnetic field of the permanent magnet attached to the speaker. Like charges repel each other and different charges attract. As an audio signal is sent through the voice coil and the musical waveform moves up and down, the voice coil is attracted and repelled by the permanent magnet.
This makes the cone that the voice coil is attached to move back and forth. The back and forth motion creates pressure waves in the air that we perceive as sound. In addition, microphone are literally loudspeakers working in reverse.
Photo: Rory Seydel
The principle of speakers reminds us of hearing aids. Different people use similar products in different ways and it also remind me the words of "Affordance" and "comprehension". In Don Norma's book ‘The Design of Everyday Things’, he describes affordance as “the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used.” This also explains the use of the "affordance" between speaker and hearing aid.
Photo: Zoe
After demonstrate that how speaker as well as microphone work, we analysis the usage, effect and their subjects. From the diagram, we found that speaker is usually used to volume up the sound and it also represent a power politically. It remind us of the environmental problem, plants as well as animal are easy to be hurt in this situation, but they can not have their own "voice". Therefore, we came up with an idea which can let the plant express their thoughts.
Diagram: Zoe
concept
We had a few concept which mainly design a sound for plants, such as warning as well as smiling. From some scientific article, we knew that tree can talk to each other secretly through their underground fungi network. And this remind us of human's protest, and we thought about that when trees have a voice, what they may want to say. Therefore, we tried to design a sound experience which can arouse people's sympathy through plants' voice and their stories.
We also used processing to design an installation, when people touch the different part of it, they may hear several kinds of sound.
Photo: Zoe
Photo: Zoe
To let people understand our design and have an immersive sound experience, we wrote a piece of script of tree's story.
Final presentation
Video: Amber