science fiction meets design

The End of Hearing: project website

2011-08-28T18:31:00.000-07:00

Hoorrrrray!
After much too long spent on too much stuff, I finally managed to set up a proper project website that I can be satisfied with. Visit The-End-of-Hearing.org and see for yourself!

On the new project website you can both watch 'The End of Hearing' film in HD and see the photos in big format. There are two full stories and the Science Fiction Prototype available for read. Finally, there is a section mentioning all the recent, current and upcoming news about the project. I promise to keep it up-to-date, so make sure to keep in touch!

The-End-of-Hearing.org

The End of Hearing: CS'11 workshop in Nottingham

2011-08-04T02:05:00.000-07:00

Busy times. Last week I returned from Nottingham after a two-days long Workshop on Creative Science 2011 (part of the Intelligent Environments 2011 conference held at the University of Nottingham), where I was given an honour to present my science fiction prototype: "The End of Hearing". The quality and variety of talks was surely a surprise to everyone who gathered to listen. Enough to say that for me the whole event was as much about engineering and science, as creative thinking and design. I would like to thank everyone who was involved in organising it—this is a genuinely hot thing today and it can evolve into something really big and important tomorrow. But most of all, it has a potential of becoming a free-minded platform of designer-scientist collaboration... at least I would hope for that.

It was also great to meet some mighty people and get to know their work a bit closer: Regina Peldszus, Marc Tuters, Kevin Tassini and Tiina Kymäläinen. I enjoyed your presentations very much—well done, guys!

I am looking forward to taking part in the next workshop in 2012.

Below: 1 & 2] Notthingham Trent University monumental fascist-like building. It looks dated now, but it is a high-tech education facility inside! 3] modernist lights in one of the twin lecture halls—love it! Slick, tidy, modern and effective. Reminds me of some lovely old shops in East Berlin equipped with forgotten products from the Bauhaus era.

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The End of Hearing: feedback #3

2011-07-03T19:11:00.001-07:00

I have processed all the collected feedback (64 forms in total) and this is what it looks like after quantifying, summing up and distributing all the data:

Initial feedback conclusions:

1] we believe that future can be shaped and that design can help us do this;

2] we value hearing and think that we can adapt to future soundscapes;

3] we are undecided about the role that noise plays in our lives.

More specific conclusions should be published soon.

The End of Hearing: feedback #2

2011-06-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

I collected 65 "Hearing Trade-off" test questionnaires in total. This is what I expected to have in the end of the Rochelle Experiment. So what will I do with all this now?

There are some aspects of the "Hearing Trade-off" test, which will determine the way I will need to treat the results, and which also became apparent already while conducting the experiment. One such problem is the fact that the test was semi-open (or maybe semi-closed) and that the answers may thus not direct anywhere explicitly. I need admit here that collaborating with a sociologist, statistician or any survey specialist in the future may be my lesson here. Nevertheless, I will try to put together and interpret the findings I managed to collected.

Whether I will be able to write comprehensible recommendations for the scientific and design professional communities is one thing. Another one is that the show in the Rochelle School was a great success! I managed to capture peoples' attention, inspire their imagination and make them think. Therefore, I have proved that it is possible to communicate science fiction based on scientific evidence to the public. It is also possible to engage people in a conversation focused around rather complex topics. Finally, it is now certain that people want to engage in the discussion about our future—there is hunger for communicating, explaining and democratising science. And science fiction proved to be a great tool of this purpose.

Above: an attempt at juxtaposing all collected "Hearing Trade-off" tests in one image. As this method of quantitative evaluation might have worked well for the first survey, this time I will probably need to employ different, maybe more traditional methods...

The End of Hearing: interacting in the show

2011-06-21T18:59:00.000-07:00

The MACD show at the Rochelle School has been attracting great number of people and it is hard to find a moment during the day to do anything else than offering my time in the gallery to the visitors. And it's great! The show is widely praised and especially our Digital Media sector receives some good attention.

The private viewing night was very busy. A lot of visitors were queuing to enter the first floor with our digital and interactive presentation. My work received some publicity both online (https://twitter.com/#!/marekkultys) and real-life while having a number of interesting conversations. Thanks to my sister, Dotty, I managed to conduct over 30 "Hearing Trade-off" tests on that one night. Also a big thank you to Mela (melayerka.com) who took all those photos for me. Well done!

The End of Hearing: the script

2011-06-16T14:42:00.000-07:00

This is a post that by my negligence is posted too late. It should have been here long before the films published recently and even before any report from the workshop front. What I forgot to include is the script.

The script for the film I produced became the canvas for building objects, drawing diagrams, shooting the film and everything in general. So here it is:

We redesign the “Present” before it becomes the “Future”.

The Design for the Future Institute is an independent London-based think tank. We use design thinking and employ scientific expertise to foresee and evade the pitfalls, and dead ends of civilisational development. The DFI's role is to predict and redesign future changes from today. We do this by means of product design, changing human behaviour, as well as by inspiring scientific developments.

Today, the DFI launches a new investigation into what came alongside the technical progress by default. Noise pollution changed our soundscapes and new listening habits brought about new risks. In reaction to this, the DFI designers identified three critical areas for their informed intervention: mass hearing impairment, sound conditioning technology and augmented hearing implants. Each area has been explored in a scenario envisioning potential consequences of today's fiction becoming future reality.

At the Design for the Future Institute, we identify and analyse the pitfalls of civilisational progress. Our recent survey shows that most of us recognise an increasing need for more silence in our lives. If we continue to absorb more and more noise every day, very soon our soundscapes will become intolerable or even damaging to our hearing. At the DFI, we have been thinking about this problem.

This is the Otomixer—the hearing regulation tool of the future. It temporarily impairs human hearing in order to adjust its sensitivity to noise pollution. The straightforward “what you hear is what you get” interface translates equaliser settings into a customised drug compound, which can be used as a daily wellness pill or a life-long vaccination against noise. Adapting to the environment in this way is easier than rethinking our civilisation or changing the world around us.
At the Design for the Future Institute, we research and support new spin-offs from emerging technologies. Sound conditioning is a revolutionary method intended as a protection from noise-induced hearing loss. But unexpectedly, it is also a source of an adrenalin rush, and of great pleasure. We see it as an exciting and lucrative opportunity for the experience industry. At the DFI, we provisionally called it the “blasting sport”.

The Acoustic Amusements Centre is our proposal for creating an arena for blasting sports near the third runway at the Heathrow airport. It is designed to give a second life to an area degraded by noise pollution, as well as an opportunity to redefine the boundaries of what we will know as entertainment in the future. Although already raising a lot of controversy, the blasting sport is a fact.
At the Design for the Future Institute, we design and advocate the augmentation of human senses. Our evolving symbiosis with technology calls for even better ways of interfacing and communicating. It is also an opportunity to extend our natural capabilities. At the DFI, we motivate scientific research leading to reinventing our hearing.

AIR—the Augmenting Implant Radio—is a new, radical way of augmenting human aural faculty. It is a miniature radio receiver that connects to the human central nervous system via the cochlear nerve, providing an audible perception of everything happening in the ether. After implanting, the AIR capsule dissolves, enabling the neurons to grow around the implant. In the future, the AIR can help mitigate noise-depravation-based sleeplessness with adults, and given to newborns it can become a fully comprehensible sixth sense. Today, in the age of the information flow, quantitative perception of information is paramount.

Today, what we do at the DFI is science fiction. But in twenty years time this fiction may become the reality for us all.

This is why the DFI's strategy is to challenge the public with the visions of the future. This is in line with our mission: to educate people about current issues and to advise the authorities on prospective changes.

We want to confront you with potential changes happening in the future. We also want to include you in our design process. Every volunteering viewer, who wishes to take a leap into the future or respond to the presented scenarios, is advised to take our “Hearing Trade-off” test. In recognition of your help, you will be rewarded with an AIR implant.

We want you to redesign the future with us.

We ask for your feedback!

The End of Hearing: feedback #1

2011-06-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

I am currently conducting the Rochelle Experiment—a feedback session in the CSM MACD final show.

After explaining my scenarios to the audience, I am giving out a questionnaire with a variety of semi-open questions. I am aiming at collecting 60 feedbacks and presenting it in the CS'11 conference in Nottingham in July this year.

The End of Hearing: films #3

2011-06-14T05:36:00.000-07:00

And this is a separate post with the full, 6:50 minutes long "The End of Hearing" publicity release. Enjoy!

The End of Hearing from mrklts on Vimeo.

The End of Hearing: films #2

2011-06-14T05:23:00.001-07:00

After two weeks of restless filming, cutting, recording, animating, tweeking and so much more, I finally created "The End of Hearing" publicity films.

The whole thing is 7:00 minutes long and divided into 5 chapters:
1] Design for the Future Institute intro;
2] DFI scenario #1: The Otomixer;
3] DFI scenario #2: Blasting!;
4] DFI scenario #3: Augmenting Implant Radio;
5] call for participation in the DFI's "Hearing Trade-off" test.

I uploaded all of them on Vimeo, so please feel free to watch it.
Thanks a lot to my sister, Dot, for letting her voice and face for the film, as well as my girlfriend, Mela, for letting her hand in one of the chapters.

These are the consecutive chapters #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5:

The End of Hearing #1 (intro) from mrklts on Vimeo.

The End of Hearing #2 (otomixer) from mrklts on Vimeo.

The End of Hearing #3 (blasting!) from mrklts on Vimeo.

The End of Hearing #4 (air) from mrklts on Vimeo.

The End of Hearing #5 (call) from mrklts on Vimeo.

The End of Hearing: scenario diagrams

2011-06-14T04:56:00.000-07:00

To assist explaining the scenarios I prepared for the final show, I created three posters, which guide through the complicated processes of sound conditioning and blasting, radio signal reception through the AIR implant and artificial silence vaccinating using the Otomixer.

The posters are not intended to be self-explanatory. The processes are just too complicated to place them on one poster and not make it look too busy. And anyway, I wish to have those conversations with people coming to the show, asking questions, making strange suggestions, not understanding half of what I would be saying...

These are the posters:

The End of Hearing: private view & friends and family viewing

2011-06-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

"The End of Hearing" is now comfortably set up in the Rochelle School in Schoreditch, London. The whole Digital Media section is placed on the first floor of the gallery, making it a nice and cosy place to be around all animating and prototyping mates.

The private view will take place today at 18:00. You need an invitation to get in, so probably if you got one, you'd be considering to come. If this is the case, please do not hesitate any longer—come and see the amazing work of the last year of the good and old MACD.

If, however, you have not been blessed with a magic invitation, please feel free to come on any other day between June 15th and 23rd, 10:00 - 18:00. I will be there every day conducting my experiment (the Rochelle Experiment), and I will be happy to give you a tour around the place.

Another piece of good news: my parents have decided to visit me during the weekend and they will see my work at the "friends and family" opening. Horray!

The End of Hearing: building the implants #4

2011-06-14T04:24:00.000-07:00

The blisters are now ready.

So far I have only 30 implants assembled, so I cannot use all the packaging I produced, but after June 14th (after the private view) I will be soldering more of them. I plan to have 60 implants in total to give away to people visiting my project and sharing their feedback.

Below: blisters with AIR implants inside and a close-up of the AIR implant. Looks pretty sinister, I hope.

The End of Hearing: filming #1

2011-06-14T04:12:00.000-07:00

For the purpose of a film, some necessary changes were to be made in my initial script:

1. the name of the think tank should have been changed. Trade-off Futures Institute sounds good, but it does not indicate any connection with design—and this is very important in my work, as I try to redefine the role of a designer.

2.the scripts should be 3 times shorter. Otherwise all that reading will bore the viewer to death... and will take definitely more than 20 minutes. In a gallery, in which there is 55 other work to be seen, no one has that much time to spend. My films should be something in between 5-8 minutes.

3. There need to be more focus on the role of design in my project. The scenarios are all fine and intersting, but there is no way I can communicate all scientific evidence for each of then in a 1-2 minutes long presentation... I need to focus and shorten the script, as well as make it more dramatic. Dramatic is always good.

So, to conclude, what I came up with can be heard in the films that I will link to later on. The voice-over for the film was recorded by my sister. Thank you for all your generous help, Dotty!

The End of Hearing: building the Otomixer #5

2011-06-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

Finally it's ready.

The Otomixer is working well, is looking good, and is making people curious.

Next thing to do is to film it and use the footage in a publicity release film I am going prepare for the show (it will communicate each scenarion separately, all of them as a general theme, as well as how the viewers can participate in the project).

All effort can be now directed towards making the blister for implants and creating the films.

The End of Hearing: building the implants #3

2011-06-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

The box with foam filling did not work really well as a packaging for the implants. First of all it had a rather "home" touch and a "friendly" feel. I do not want it to look like that—this is an electronic device, which is supposed to be planted inside newborns' brains after all.

So I decided to create a blister. Because there is probably no blister of this size available in the market, and because I wanted it to be rather rigid and strong, I decided to create my own blister desing and vacuum form them using 1mm acrylic.

Below you can see the form I created. Thanks a lot to Melvin and Billy for hepling me out with routing the holes. The mold is equipped with a number of 1mm holes, through which air will be sucked out (2 holes in each implant nest, 4 holes in the corners of the mold (to prevent acrylic wrinckling in that areas) and 5 holes along the axis of the mold.

I made around 30 vacuum forms, around 14 of which are actually looking good enough to be used.

Another thing is the back of the blister... it turned out that finding an adequate material and processing it took me even more time that making the blisters!

The End of Hearing: building the Otomixer #4

2011-06-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

When I came back from Gdańsk there was really no time to waste. On the very same day when my plane from northern Poland had landed in Luton, I went yet again to the workshop to continue my work on the Otomixer.

It took me a day to adjust the size, prime and paint the pre-laser-cut Otomixer main control panel. After assembling empty vials and plugging in the headphones, the device looked like this:

I took me several days to seal all the vials and pour the liquids into them. I used three food colourings (yellow, green and red), potassium permanganate (purple) and india ink (black). Vials are sealed with a termoplastic resin, which I got from my grandfather (it was used in Polish radio industry in the '70, but still does an excellent job).

Soon afterwards I started to assemble all necessary electronic components. Eventually, I manage to fit in 2 amplifiers (based no the stethoscope design that I build before) and an equaliser (5 band, instead of 6 band, which I used previously, but this is still the same circutry). It works all fine, and is pretty exciting when you can equalise the same voices you can normally hear around you (it's actually live equalisation). Unfortunately the differences in frequencies are not that distinct (even though I used capacitors ranging from several hunderds of pF to 10.000 times stronger ones of uF value)... This is something I might want to work on later on, improving my electronic circutry skills at the same time.

Art & Science Meeting, Gdańsk 2011

2011-05-25T15:16:00.000-07:00

I'm just leaving Gdańsk in northern Poland, where I managed to attend the Art & Science Meeting conference. I should have been sitting home preparing for the final show in less than two weeks time now, but I could not miss this kind of event in my own country.

And it was definitely worth it!

I visited three very interesting shows, each tackling a completely different aspect of art + science theme. "The Pleasure of Light" is a retrospection of work by F Malina and G Kepes work from fifty years ago. "Performing Data" by M Fleischmann and W Strauss reveals the very beginnings of virtual reality and computer interaction projects, as well as the creation of 3d spaces. All this when I was enjoying Mario Bros on my 64 colours Nintendo console in 1992! The last one is "Blue Morph" by V Vesna and J Gimzewski. It is a lovely piece really gaining from being placed in a gothic church.

"Blue Morph" by Vesna & Gimzewski.

In five hours time I will be boarding a plane back to London and going straight to work on my own projects. Nevertheless, I will have very positive memories from Gdańsk in May 2011!

The End of Hearing: building the Otomixer #3

2011-05-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

Today I bought half a liter of white primer and half a liter of white glossy paint, and I gave the Otomixer its lovely, elaborate, bespoke colour—clear, neutral white. I decided to keep it white for several reasons:
• it is a medical appliance, therefore it needs to fit our expectations of such device;
• it is a tool of the future, and future is clean and sterile—at least in science fiction that I read;
• it is the best colour for something that does not exist (yet!);
• it will be a nice background for the glass vials with vividly colourful liquids;
• it will help focusing on what the tool does, rather than how it looks like, which is what I hope for.

The final coating of the Otomixer can be seen above. Of course I could not stop myself from spraying too much paint, which proves the old saying from my homeland right: "the very good is the worst enemy of the good"...

Tomorrow I will start mounting the glass vials on the top of the Otomixer, cleaning the jack sockets, installing 4 bumpers to the base, laser cutting the front panel and of cause installing the equaliser mechanism (this however, will not take place in the workshop due to the fact that dust might not be beneficial for electronics).

The End of Hearing: building the implants #2

2011-05-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

So apart from 60 ready to use radio receiver implants, I will need to present them in a way to the audience, and also think of how to give them as a reward to those, who decide to help we with the feedback.

I tried out using an old ink pen box, but it does not work really, makes the whole thing look rather cosy and gives a wring impression about the nature of the implant. It probably need to be more medical, with an edge, a bit like medical devices opened from a disposable septic packaging and then disposed into a bin with other tools heading for a hot, bubbly, germ-killing bath. Or something like a metal tray with meat in Marks & Spencer (btw, what a criminal waste of materials and resources!).

All this needs some thought.

The End of Hearing: building the implants #1

2011-05-17T13:59:00.000-07:00

Apart from the Otomoxer, I need to build a number of working radio implants. This is the physical part of the "Voices inside my head" story, where a possibility of having a radio receiver implanted into the cochlear nerve is discussed.

I ordered sixty germanium OA91 diodes, which proved to work well before. Apart from that I need capacitors and induction coils.

Although previously I had managed to tune in to talkSport at 1089 kHz, the signal was rather weak. This is because I had picked the value of the capacitance imprecisely. Later on I managed to tune in to BBC radio 5 at 909 kHz. I used a pair of 390 pF ceramic capacitors (joint capacitance = 780pF) and a 39 uH inductance coil. This makes the circuit resonate at 912 kHz—almost precisely at the wavelength of BBC 5!

I will assemble 50 "BBC radio 5" receivers and 10 "talkSport" receivers. I hope all these will work in the Rochelle School during the show. One of my concerns is the roof, which is made of tin-clad. This might hinder the reception. Another issue is the antenna—should I organise a more professional one, or stick to the simple wire, which has been working to a better or worse extent all the time now?

The End of Hearing: building the Otomixer #2

2011-05-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

Today I managed to successfully glue all Otomixer bits together.
The whole thing is rather solid and heavy—I did not expect it to be that big.
But the glass vial I also have to use with the prototype are big themselves, so they in a way dictated the scale of the Otomixer.

Yesterday I soldered a small board with two stereo 3mm jack sockets and cables: there is only one cable connected to both input channels, so de facto it is a stereo socket providing only mono output. But this is enough for me and for the project—anyway, the equaliser inside the otomixer has only one channel as well, so it just needs to be the lonely mono.

After gluing everything together and just after I started filling all gaps and holes with putty—I realised I confused the side that the vial block is pointing towards! It is mirrored—the other way round than I designed initially. But it turned out to work not bad at all, if not even better. At least for a left-handed person...

Tomorrow I wish to start impregnating mdf and priming it. I will see how long will it take, but maybe I will also be able to put the first layer of white paint...

On Friday I will have the main panel laser cut in the Southampton Row basement. Then it will only need to have the equaliser mechanism with the potentiometers fitted, glass vials mounted and sealed dry, as well as a pair of rails installed at the end of the Otomixer arm, where the compound will be extracted. Not that much...

The End of Hearing: building the Otomixer #1

2011-05-16T16:55:00.000-07:00

So as part of the show set and the whole project, and the general method I am using in my work right now—I started building a speculative/fictional/God-save-us-from-it object. It is the Otomixer—a tool for regulating one's hearing. By adjusting the frequency bands of your hearing with the equaliser sliders you can customise your own ototoxic compound, take it and experience hearing loss according to your settings. It can be in effect from as short as 4 hours, to as long as one's lifetime—so use the timing know with care!

I started building the Otomixer in Central St Marintn's wood workshop in Southampton Row building last week. And this is the nicest workshop I've ever been to (I've been to three, worked in two). They've got plenty of nice, old, sturdy machines, which are pure pleasure to use. This is actually the last year anyone can use those facilities in the epic Southampton Row building, because everything's moving to King's Cross in summer. Lucky me!

I will publish some pics with the workshop itself, because I feel it's just too much pity to have it forgotten. I wish to remember working there...

The End of Hearing: Voices Inside My Head scenario

2011-05-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

Radio waves. Ultrasounds. Infrared. All these parts of our rich reality remain beyond the range of our human sensory suite. Our hearing detects air pressure fluctuations only between 20 and 20.000 beats per second. Our seeing is constrained merely to the visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is what we are equipped with by nature...

But what if we could extend our perception with the help of technology? What if we were able to be physically connected to everything that happens across the ether? What if we could communicate almost telepathically with humans and machines alike?

At DAFT Institute, the Research Unit investigates into the future of augmenting human perception. They try to find a match between the cutting edge scientific developments with the real-life situations. The results of their work will help define but also compensate the limits of human cognition.

Augmenting Implant Radio is a radio receiver connecting to human central nervous system. It is a miniature glass capsule with a receiver capable of tuning into most of the radio wavelengths. Acting as an antenna, human body amplifies the reception. This footage shows the implantation of the AIR at DAFT's research clinic. It is a safe procedure based on a similar one used for modern hearing implants. The AIR connects with the cochlear nerve, which links the inner ear directly to the brain. This way a direct interface between the wireless infosphere and the human auditory faculty can be created. In practice it will enable a person with the AIR to sense radio transmissions almost telepathically.

There is a range of potential applications for this very new technology. Severe insomnia due to lack of urban noise stimuli can be mitigated with the AIR. If implanted at an early stage of newborn's brain development, it is possible for the child to produce a natural understanding of radio signals alongside learning to interpret visual or acoustic information. The AIR can also make the next major leap towards realising mankind's long-yearned dream of ubiquitous computing and augmented reality.

DAFT Institute strongly believes in the future of man-machine symbiosis. Augmenting Implant Radio offers a new platform for augmented hearing and a promise of revolutionary change in human societies and behaviour. This is an informed trade-off between our progress and our hearing.

Call for volunteers! Augmenting Implant Radio will undergo a series of clinical tests later this year. We are calling for all volunteer participants, who wish to have the AIR implanted and go through the cognitive adaptation course. You can contribute to this pioneering research project!

The End of Hearing: Blasting! scenario

2011-05-16T16:52:00.000-07:00

Human hearing is an extremely sophisticated and fragile organ.
In the past we were vulnerable to hearing trauma. Today, thanks to the revolutionary sound conditioning treatment, we are able to immunise our hearing to damaging levels of noise.

This is an old footage from a sound conditioning research lab showing the effects of the treatment on humans. Although initially intended to prevent hearing damage, sound conditioning treatment proved to be an exciting process in itself. It is often compared to an accelerated bungee jump, because of the rapid adrenaline rush it triggers. Now it has became increasingly popular among extreme sports enthusiasts, who dub it “blasting”.

At DAFT Institute, the Human Behaviour Unit is particularly interested in the future. To investigate into the opportunities arising from hearing immunity, they develop scenarios and analyse them. The results of their work provides a fresh insight into human behaviours and needs.

The Acoustic Amusements Centre is a proposal for building an arena for blasting sports. It is DAFT's design response to the emerging need for regenerating urban areas affected by noise pollution. Because blasting requires high quality sound insulation, the close proximity to the third Heathrow runway will not affect the Centre. The facility will consist of a scene for blasting shows, blasting booths for private experience, International Blasting Association offices and a sound conditioning research laboratory. Considering the current popularity of blasting in the world, the Centre should be seen as a serious financial opportunity as well.

The Acoustic Amusements Centre is the next milestone in our relationship with the hearing. DAFT believes that blasting can be progressed from a minor technological spin-off into a paying off entertainment venue. This is an informed trade-off between our progress and our hearing.

The End of Hearing: Artificial Silence scenario

2011-05-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

Noise pollution. Urban transportation. Excessive use of personal music players.
This is a daily routine for most of the population.

These commuters are listening to music louder than 85 Db. At least one of them will experience hearing damage by the year 2020. Noise induced hearing loss has become a major civilisation health threat.

But what if more than half of the population becomes hard of hearing? How is that going to change the meaning of the word “impaired”? Who will need to adapt to the new circumstance? What kind of help could they be offered?

At DAFT Institute, the Human Environment Unit focuses on the future. To explore the ways of dealing with noise pollution they ask questions, which may seem absurd. But the answers are taken very seriously, as they can promote developing new revolutionary ideas.

The Otomixer is a hearing regulation tool of the future. It is suggested in response to the increasing demand for a system providing a way of dealing with noise pollution. Unlike any other solution, the Otomixer adjusts one's hearing to the soundscape. It does that by administering a dose of ototoxic drugs, which temporarily paralyses hearing. Designed by DAFT as an instant personal treatment, it can be easily used at home. A straightforward “what you HEAR is what you get” interface precisely translates equaliser settings into a customised antibiotics compound, which can be injected or taken orally. By adjusting the density of the compound it is possible to control the duration of the toxic action. It can be everything from a daily wellness pill to a life-long vaccination against noise.

The Otomixer is a radical answer to many life situations.
Mrs Richards: I live in a noisy urban area. For many years I used to have restless nights. A pill of eight-hour strong ototoxins solved my problem.
Mr Bedford: I work in airport ground service. I have been taking an injection against medium frequency noise every quarter for two years now. My comfort at work now has hugely improved.
Dr Khan: I am an an audiologist. I prescribe specialist ototoxin compounds for people with hearing oversensitivity. This is how hearing impairment is treated today.

DAFT believes that future is to be invented and designed today. The Otomixer provides a loud forewarning of the approaching risks, but also a radical solution to the emerging conditions. This is an informed trade-off between our progress and our hearing.

The End of Hearing: realising the obvious

2011-05-16T16:33:00.000-07:00

Many things to do and little time to write about them.
I realised what my project really is about. It is not about sound or hearing, but rather about a new concept of the role of a designer. Thanks to Sadhna for helping me formulate this important thought! This was lingering in the back of my head for some time now, but only now did I force myself (was I forced) to admit to what I thought.
But don't worry—sound and hearing are still a theme in my project. After all it's called "The End of Hearing" and I still believe this is a lively issue today.
It's quite late in night again, so my English is worsening with each sentence now.
I will have five more posts today, and then some more photos to show later during the week. Stay tuned!

The End of Hearing: radio implant working!

2011-04-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

The first radio implant was a nice and handy mock-up. Recently, I reconsidered different ways of improving it and also making it work. It received an additional leg (the one coming out of a germanium diode) and is even smaller. But most importantly—it picks up radio signal. It is fixed tuned to 1073kHz (in London you'd hear talkSport radio on these wavelengths). With an amp, antenna and ground it is possible to listen to it using standard headphones.

I am planning to build one hundred of these working radio implants and give them as a reward to people who decide to give me feedback on my project. It will be an unusual opportunity to take away a piece of work shown in the gallery and also a small memento reminding of what my project is about—the emerging end of our hearing.

The End of Hearing: equaliser

2011-04-12T08:42:00.000-07:00

After a long and painful struggle, I managed to build an equaliser—the heart of the future otomixer, which is an object appearing in the story about artificial silence. The equaliser has 6 bands (band #1: frequency 50Hz [100nF capacitor used]; #2: ~100Hz? [50nF]; #3: ~250Hz? [25.3nF]; #4: 500Hz [10nF]; #5: ~1000Hz [6.8nF]; #6: 1600Hz [3.3nF]) and still generates a bit too much noise, but it is negligible in the project and can be sorted later on.

The equaliser (on the left half of the breadboard) is connected to an amplifier (on the upper right side) through an audio transformer (big single part in the middle). I used a LM741 IC for the equaliser and a LM386 for the amp. I still think if it is advisable to show the mechanism of the equaliser in the final show or hide it inside a nice futuristic casing...?

I'm twitting!

2011-04-12T08:39:00.001-07:00

I hate to admit, but I am now on Twitter. I will not be a very often guest there and I am not intending to post more often than maybe... once in a while? Nevertheless, this is where you can find me: https://twitter.com/mrklts

The End of Hearing: radio implants

2011-04-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

This is a sample radio receiver implant, which will be presented during the show. This one is yellow (vitamin C), but a final one should be transparent. These are working radio receivers! They are designed to receiver AM wavelength, so if you plug them into antenna and an amp they should hear signal.

I intend to build a hundred of those, each one numbered, so we'll have a limited collection of speculative mini radio implants. They will also be awarded to the audience for their feedback and response to my project. I wish to distribute as many of these implants, as possible and receive in exchange an informed and valuable feedback from the public.

Future Soundscapes: the question of how to show

2011-04-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

Recently my efforts have revolved around very immaterial aspects of my work. I was writing scenarios for my submission for Creative Science 2011 conference in July in Nottingham. I hope to present my project and my working method there... In the conference paper I managed to fit only two out of three stories wrote for my final project (to be honest, it was also a bit of time issue—not only space). The stories got some narrative, some action, some characters and raise some questions—everything a science-fiction story for my purposes really needs. I will publish them as soon I manage to write the last one, which should not be too long from now.

Apart from that the stategy for presenting the project during the final show in Rochelle School in June has been giving me a nasty headache since the end of March. Eventually, I decided to do what needed to be done anyway and just go for it—I will stage a performance in the gallery. It should be something in between a scientific procedure designed to sell sophisticated products and a bureaucratic scheme introduced partly against peoples' will. I intend to ask my sister, Dotty, and my friend, Tine, who are actors and already took part in recording previous voice-overs for Future Soundscapes (interview on the tube).

With this performance approach I hope to achieve two things:
1] to convince people that things are going to change in the future in terms of our soundscapes and our hearing;
2] to get people to think about the future of our hearing and share their ideas about potential changes we might undergo.
This means my goal is to raise some awareness about hearing and receive some valuable feedback from people. Because during the "Work in Progress" show the feedback was rather unsatisfactory and I did not feel I managed to communicate the message across, this time I wish to interact with the audience on a different level. I will try to engage them through happening (a performative piece, where the audience is actively participating in the process). Having much better contact with the viewer (i.e.: more time, viewer's attention and resources to explain Hope this works), I hope to collect viable, detailed, personal and trustworthy feedback.

Another thing is that the theme of my project drifted away from soundscapes in general and therefore, should be renamed. Because currently it is all about our aural faculty, I decided to name it: "The End of Hearing". Scary, huh?

Future Soundscapes: stethoscope in stereo

2011-03-12T09:17:00.000-08:00

Recently I've been working on building a stereo stethoscope for my project. I managed to connect two microphones to line via a separate set of amps and transistors, so they work independently. Somehow the lines are not fully separated, but just pick one of the signals stronger... This remains to be solved—probably the solution is closer than I could ever imagine. Yet, one never sees one's nose, although it is always the closest object to one's eyes...

Imagine what would happen, it the microphones were connected with e.g. 50m long wires and you could listen really close and simultaneously to things that happen in 100m distance from each other, to those tiny sounds audible only to someone being in a very certain spot... What would this mean and what kind of detached experience would a listener have? And what about wires 500m long? You'd be able to eavesdrop on things taking place 1km apart, but you'd probably not see it.

Future Soundscapes: stethoscope prototype

2011-03-08T06:43:00.000-08:00

During the Industry Event alongside the scenarios I presented one prototype, which could accompany one of the scenarios ("Artificial Silence").

It is a simple stethoscope based on a Greman design I found here. I managed to improve it for my purposes and gain a greater amplification, however at the expense of increased circuit noise. Nevertheless, the whole prototype may work as a simulator for introducing the concept of noise vaccination (desensitisation to sounds of a certain loudness, which in practice means decreasing human hearing sensitivity). By adjusting the potentiometer in the middle, one can see how silence might look like after the vaccination, where on this scale is normal human hearing sensitivity and how loud to a person before the treatment might become vaccinated person's normal sound intensity level.

Design Fiction by J Bleecker

2011-03-07T04:50:00.000-08:00

I just came across a very interesting article by Julian Bleecker—"Design Fiction: A short essay on design, science, fact and fiction"—which introduces the whole new approach towards design based on science fiction utilised as a speculative design tool.

The article helped me structure my thoughts, reinforced my confidence in this field (it turns out that this is an approach taken really seriously by some open-minded people) and inspired in terms of many potential ways to push my stories forward. It also gives an account on how this emerging field of design came to life, briefly outlaying the history of fact and fiction mingling together. And this space is really a gold mine of inspiration for design.

You can find the article here

Future Soundscapes: Artificial Silence

2011-03-07T04:46:00.001-08:00

Not such a distant future.

New reality calls for new measures. Even though each year saw an introduction of quieter vehicles, quieter machines and quieter cities, the exponential rate of development and the growth of economies resulted in increasing levels of noise pollution. Urban soundscapes became more and more unbearable. Silence seemed in conflict with our need for progress.

But then someone—no one really remembers who—suggested a trully philosophical solution. Instead of fighting the noise around us, we could adjust our hearing to simply hear less. This became known as “artificial silence”. In fact, there was nothing revolutionary about it, as silence is not an absolute term anyway—it had been always relative to human hearing range and hearing sensitivity. Shifting conditions around us should induce changes inside our auditory apparatus. Artificial silence made it happen just a bit fatser.

Lured by the opportunities offered by liberalising soundscape legislation, many industries initiated a global programme of vaccinations against noise pollution. Every newborn was conditioned to perceive silence the way it was adequate in terms of modern standards. Children were vaccinated in schools, adults in their workplaces. Alongside measuring one’s blood pressure conditioning was made a standard procedure during every hospitalisation. Soon almost everyone became adjusted. Almost...

Some individuals remained “hyper-sensitive”. They were not vaccinated for varius reasons, be it medical, practical or religious. Nevertheless, this two percent of the population became treated as aurally disabled. To include them into the mainstream of the society, different substitute methods for impairing hearing were developed.

And this is when my story begins...

Future Soundscapes: Voices in My Head

2011-03-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

Not such a distant future.

And ubiquitous computing is closer at hand than ever before. Because today it will be decided whether humans could become integrated with machines on a completely new level. If we only manage to silence all concerns about the ethical nature of this step, tomorrow the humanity may become blessed with a brand new sense.

Initial experiments in establishing a direct connection between the vestibulocochlear nerve and a radio receiver proved the link might work better than anticipated. Although no functional hack into human’s neural system has yet been made, a viable example was provided on a chimpanzee. Tesla, the first chimp to receive an integrated radio-neural implant, was also the first to sense the electromagnetic field and radio transmissions.

Because everything about the direct radio-neural implants is still very new, people are filled with anxiety. Implanting first mechanical devices into human body raised similar concernes in the 20th Century. Then came the third stage of human-machine integration in the Murphy scale—electronic devices became linked to human senses and through them indirectly to the brain. This had been achieved not long ago and already it has made all external communication devices obsolete. Implanting a transciever alongside a set of speakers inside the middle ear and a microphone next to vocal cords enabled us to even more directly and effortlessly explore the wireless infosphere. Some have decided to even seal their ears off and rely exclusively on electroacoustic input...

Today however, we face a great opportunity to extend the set of human senses. Some say it will be telepathy and to some extent thay are right. It is yet another ethical dillema that humankind faces in consequence to our technological development.

And this is when my story begins...

Future Soundscapes: Blasting

2011-03-07T04:13:00.000-08:00

Not such a distant future.

A team of scientists led by Y. XXXXXX developed a technology to apply sound conditioning treatment to humans. The sound conditioning effect was discovered and described in the early 21st Century. It involves exposing to a long term low-pitch sound and results in an acquired immunity to hearing loss caused by acoustic trauma. XXXXXX’s technology for conditioning human hearing proved safe and effective.

At first, the treatment was used exclusively by certain professionals, whose working environment involved a risk of hearing loss. Perceived as a precautionary measure and prescribed to anyone who asked for it, after some time it started to slip out of control. Bookings for conditioning sessions largely exceeded all initial estimates...

In an official investigation it was discovered that those, who had been conditioned and later exposed to acoustic trauma, found great pleasure and excitement in loosing their hearing for a moment. Many of them compared it to an orgasm during bungee-jumping. Further research into psycho-physical effects of acoustic trauma showed that it gives a unique holistic experience. On the physiological level it was a result of combined effects of an increase in adrenaline level and a decrease in calbindin D-28 kDa immunoreactivity.

After the prohibition of sound conditioning, illegal treatment facilities had been set up. Not surprisinlgy, induced hearing trauma quickly became a popular kick in the clubbing world. It was made a climax point of every rave party and became known as “blasting”. There was no efficient way of enforcing the prohibition of conditioning and blasting—perpetrators were always found clean, as “blasting” left no clear evidence.

Very soon first cases of factual hearing loss due to illegal and unreliable conditioning were reported.

And this is when my story begins...

Future Soundscapes: new scenarios

2011-03-07T03:19:00.000-08:00

Having collected all feedback from the Work in Progress show, I tried to use it to improve the scenarios I wrote initially. Firstly I decided to abandon one of them—"Silent Rooms"—as it did not meet with a response I was hoping for. To my mind it is also not radical enough as well. I also decided to merge two scenarios together, which for the very beginning were closely connected anyway: "Soundscape Headpod" and "Headpod Adaptation Courses". Eventually, I decided to go forward with the "Sound Conditioning" scenario and a reinforced "Soundscape Headpod".

I wrote three new scenarios that have a firmer base in current scientific developments and leave more space for interpretation.
The first one, "Blasting", talks about sound conditioning treatment misused by some individuals after it had turned out to produce some strange drug-like side-effects.
The second one, "Voices in My Head", is set in the moment, when it is about to be decided whether integrating human neural system with electronic transcievers should be regarded as ethical.
The third scenario, "Artificial Silence", talks about an alternative way to fight noise pollution, which involves shifting human hearing threshold in order to adapt to changed environment.

Each scenario will be accompanied by a narrative object, which will be in a relationship with the scenario and introduce the narrative. Apart from the object (be it interactive, reactive, inactive or conceptual) I will write three stories that will take place in the envisaged environments.

Future Soundscapes: show feedback

2011-02-26T18:21:00.000-08:00

During the "Work in Progress" show I talked with people, discussed what they think about my project and the approach I chose for it, and also collected a number of ideas, with which people decided to respond to my four initial science-fiction scenarios. All of them concerned future.

These are the responses:

sound travel (surfing electroacoustic waves)

upbringing accompanied by sounds (audio), (also during pregnancy)

emotions triggers orgasms

brave new world

acoustic medicine

silent warfare (6.45pm)

an orchestrated, choreographed apocalypse

retro-active sound-reactive transport density

limit one sense, increase one sense

audio warfares (instead of military)

adaptation

healing + preservation of natural ability

sonic hygiene / beauty products

sound for digestion

sound gym

sound addiction - need to play ambient city sound to fall asleep

no more tools! Please! Let’s just deal / change the soundscape that exists?! LAWS against noise, haha? Or everything ‘just’ needs to be designed quiter? :)

sound encryption of thinking

soundophonic theater — replace cinema, providing a full sound experience

smart earplugs - that block out unwanted sounds but allow wanted sounds to be heard clearly

In my opinion, all these responses hold great potential for further exploration and development. But their main strength lies in their number. Therefore, I wish to use them and the general direction that they point at in the next part of my project—developing regular science-fiction scenarios and design objects with a story behind them. Having all that in plans, I am already thinking of various ways to go forward with my project and my general fictive approach towards designing. But this is a different story...

Digital Media on show

2011-02-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

During our 'Work in Progress' show the Digital Media pathway received a really good response from the visitors. We were showing as a collective and had a small teaser to guide people to our geeky donjon.

It was conceived in an accidental overnight collaborative act by three of us. Coline B-N made the visuals, Jessika S put them to motion and Marek K created the music. You need to loop it and leave it playing for 8 hours non-stop to really get the flavour of our show space...

Future Soundscapes on show

2011-02-16T16:39:00.000-08:00

A quick view on my 'Work in Progress' show setting in Shoreditch Town Hall.
In the room on the right you can also see Paul Ferragut's printers.

MACD 2011 'Work in Progress' Show

2011-02-10T16:46:00.000-08:00

During sunny/rainy February of 2011, we have had our MACD 'Work in Progress' show in Shoreditch Town Hall basement. It was a big success and—most importantly—a great learning experience, thanks to which many trip and flops will be avoided during our MACD Final Show in June in the Rochelle School.

We curated our Digital-Media-pathway space, which met with lots of positive comments. I showed four scenarios for the Future Soundscapes project, which were printed and read. During the show I collected some valuable comments on each scenario and the overall approach to my project—it is going to be used during the development stage.

scenario #4 — Headpod Adaptation Courses

2011-02-10T16:40:00.000-08:00

London. The City.

Financial Times called it a ‘Minefield’! and The New Economist dubbed it ‘Terra Incognita’.

Promising prospects are already in sight for the newly emerged headpod market, but there is still a long way to go before it steadies and the unwritten rules are set. For the past few years we were being given a flavour of the new, experiencing the future of sound from within the headpod. Hailed as the milestone in the development of human communications, it blitzed the market unlike any other piece of consumer electronics before. Profit from the last year’s pod sales beats expectations with the total of 3 billion Monetary Units.

Even so, London’s venture capitalists turn their eyes to a yet more lucrative opportunity ahead. Educating new users on efficient ways of using the pod means small margins, but a more sustainable and long-lasting business. In anticipation of all those, who grew up in the pre-pod world but need to stay on-line, adaptation courses are being designed.

Once the business gets going, a flood of follow-ups will fight for a share in the market. With no legal framework yet in place, we can struggle with confusion over the credibility and efficacy of the courses. One sure bet is that people talk and by word of mouth the best educators will be naturally selected. How many prospective headpod users would pay for more training, having once succeeded with their market search, is to be answered in the future.

Dotty Kultys, GNN, London.

scenario #3 — Sound Conditioning

2011-02-10T16:37:00.001-08:00

London. Heathrow Airports. Terminal 9A.

We landed on schedule, which is quite unusual when travelling on the verge of the speed of sound.

Waiting for all 720 passengers to exit the plane through the front doorway. One by one, they obediently allow the crew to lead themselves out. After the flight everyone is stunned. It must have something to do with those eight para-sonic engines installed along the hull. But how did it work in those medieval Concordes? Six-hour long exposure to jet roar works really like an incapacitant.

‘Thank you for flying...’—a nice brunette stewardess puts something into my pocket. ‘Between you and me...’ she says and curtains-off the deck.

Struggling to find my way through all border and security controls. I remember taking a taxi...
Next morning I woke up in my apartment. Inside my pocket I found a ticket with contact details to an illegal sound conditioning facility. So this is what should stay between me and her... Huh! No way! I’m keeping away from this sort of dodgy treaments. Some say it protects from hearing trauma and as a result also from deafness... but I won’t get fooled again. After my first conditioning session I spent six days at home—nausea kept me sleepless for four days and vomiting every two hours. But the worst was that low-pitch buzz inside my head torturing me for a whole week.
I did not finish that treatment.

Though I know people who benefited from it. That woman I met on a flight to Cape Town—she was sound conditioned and she did not need any assistance upon arrival. She claimed to be an assistant during the implementation experiments in early 2011. But they never succeeded in developing a safe technology for the general use.
At least officially...

scenario #2 — Silent Rooms

2011-02-10T16:34:00.000-08:00

London. Westminster. The House of Commons.

The Habitable Soundscapes Committee confers whether to recommend the new Habitable Soundscapes Bill for voting. The Draft has been prepared by a Society for Acoustic Change. There is a major public pressure on its hasty introduction. The draft has been generally positively reviewed. However, paragraph 18 (about the silent rooms on the Workdoing Sites) received some concerning criticism.

According to the paragraph 18 of the Draft, all Workgivers would be required to install, furnish and maintain a special room fitted with soundproofing panels or other silencing materials. In such spaces the Worktakers should be encouraged to spend a total minimum of thirty minutes per day in order to become exposed to the beneficial influence of silence, as well as to relax and reduce stress. The Workgiver Interest Intercessor had objected to this paragraph, expressing her concern about yet another financial strain placed on the Workgivers. According to the preliminary investigation into the potential impact of the proposed HS legislation, the costs of the new silence infrastructure could exceed all public and private expenses brought by the Smoke-Free Act by over 2000%.

During the Committee proceedings it has been unanimously decided that the Draft should be revised and amendments should be introduced. A special Habitable Soundscapes Commission has also been formed. Its role would be to conduct a programme of trials and experiments in the performance of silent rooms installed on a series of representative Workdoing Sites. Based on a report produced by the HS Commission and the programme evaluation, an informed decision would be made by the Committee in one year’s time from today whether to recommend the Draft for voting or not.

scenario #1 — Soundscape Headpod

2011-02-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

London. Underground. Central Line.

Silence. We all sit motionless. Why do you wear this helmet?
It’s not a helmet. It’s a headpod.

OK, a headpod. So why are you wearing it?
It’s a communication pod. I can listen to music, talk with my friends, voice-browse the web, listen to radio... but also I can stay in silence whenever I want to. It’s good to have it. It’s isolating me from this terrIble urban noise, because it’s soundproof. Today this is important. It’s something like ear lids really, but much better.

Do you think a device that detaches you from others is generally good?
Well, everyone is detached now anyhow... you know. And it’s just a thing. It can’t really isolate anyone. It’s people who isolate themselves. I’ve seen some old digital shots from around 2010 with people on the tube. They were sitting, talking through their phones, watching films, playing on those old funny touchable gadgets, listening to music... They were already detached and isolated. A thing does nothing on it’s own.

So what can you do with your headpod?
Well, I can do plenty of stuff. I can stay in touch with everyone in my network. And I don’t need to switch between devices. Everything stays on my head. It’s really handy. And it looks smart.

But what about the real world? What about natural sounds?
What about them? They’re still there, no one took it. Birds still sing, the wind blows, water splashes... I can listen to it whenever I want to. I just need to press here and everything from the outside I can hear inside my headpod. But I don’t use it much—it’s boring.

It’s also electroacoustic. Don’t you find it impoverishing to hear the world only through a pair of speakers?
What? Why should I? That’s how it is... Do we find it impoverishing to see the world through window panes? If we need to become electroacoustic, then probably that’s the way it needs to be...

when science fiction meets design...

2011-02-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

When science fiction meets design... what could happen?

Inspired by all research findings and readings I've done towards my dissertation (which was on communication with extraterrestrial intelligence and it's implications to our understanding of communication in general), I got fascinate by science fiction as a genre. Using it as a tool for designing could be very interesting...

I have already used science fiction as a vast resource of references and examples in my written work (this will be published soon). Lem, Leinster, Spielberg... all have pushed the genre forward and extended our understanding of communication by envisaging fictive scenarios of the human-alien encounter. Naturally, none of these would probably ever happen and it will stay pure fiction as it is now. But its true value lies in one's limitless thinking, which dares to imagine what might be just around the corner, and which still awaits to be discovered.

Now, having seen how others use science fiction to express their thoughts , I would like to test science fiction as a design tool. And my interest is in future soundscapes.

future of soundscapes: scenarios

2011-01-18T15:45:00.000-08:00

To design a series of tool that would help people adapt to changing soundscapes—this is the current theme of my final project. Inspired by the extent, to which science fiction can inform science and design (I investigated into this relationship in my MA dissertation titled: "Lingua Extraterrestris—lessons in universal communication or the designer’s understanding of CETI in science and fiction"), I decided to act from a position of science-fiction writer myself. Hence, my first step will be to write trustworthy and feasible scenarios, in which modern scientific research and the use of present technologies will interweave with fictional situations. To do this, I will base my predictions on some of the six methods described by J. Sowa in his article "Złudzenie balistyczne" (2009, 2+3D Polish Design Quarterly, #33). Having selected my methodologies for anticipating future changes, I will combine them with selected methods for changing human behaviour (source needed). This will hopefully lead me to generating reliable scenarios, which in turn should inform designing of artifacts/prototypes/visualisations.

future of soundscapes: experiment #1a

2010-12-29T20:32:00.000-08:00

A quick update to the previous post...
What if we connected single sentences with lines, so we can track the meaning of each of the expressions? Thus, we'll have results, which would be not only quantitative, but also qualitative—and this is what is necessary here: to name what people believe in, what people think the future will look like, so that I can identify the self-realising prophecy...
any first conclusions? anything more busy around the be exposed to and increase linked to silence?

If this is not clear yet, I hope it becomes more understandable soon.
Now it is just loud thinking... necessary though...

future of soundscapes: experiment #1

2010-12-13T16:01:00.000-08:00

My current project, which is also intended to be my graduation project, deals with the future of soundscapes and our abilities to adapt to upcoming changes. I wish to design a series of tool that would help us adapt to the changes in future soundscapes.

Therefore, I need to research into different viable methodologies that would allow me visualise the future.

One of my methods can be called 'a self-realising prophecy' and is based on a thesis that the future will be exactly what we imagine it to be. As a consequence of that, I decided to conduct a survey, questioning people about their beliefs. Reminded by Einstein's famous saying, that the questions one ask shape the answers one get, I decided to keep the survey as open as possible, just slightly directing towards what I need to know. Surprisingly, the majority of all answers was formulated in one spirit.

In the above image you can see all answers overlapped one onto another. There is a most common path that peoples' mind is following and this, according to the theory of 'self-realising prophecy', is what the future will look like.

radio experiment #3

2010-12-13T10:29:00.000-08:00

Having done both receiving and transmitting radio signals, I approached a more sophisticated design of a radio receiver with an MK484-1 AM radio integrated circuit, which became the heart of this experiment. I also used an antenna coil with a ferrite rod for tuning, a variable capacitor, a 100k and a 1k ohm resistors, a 0.01 and two 0.1 microfarrad capacitors, and a 1,5V battery. Finally, I also prepared three one-pence coins, which were used to integrate the circuit. To put all these components together I dug out an old Soviet solderer of my grandfather's.

Everything neatly fits into a nice clip-bag and receives 4-5 local AM radio stations.
Shortly after building this receiver I learned that this does not look good in ones hands on any means of transportation in London...

radio experiment #2

2010-12-13T10:03:00.000-08:00

Having received a radio signal I wanted to build a transmitter and receive my first radio transmission. I found all necessary instructions at scitoys.com, which is an amazing repository of various interesting experiments that anyone can do using ordinary household rubbish.
Thus, I took on a challenge to build an AM transmitter.

On the contrary to the AM receiver from the radio experiment #1, I needed to use an additional source of power to run the transmitter. I also used some more advanced manufactured components, such as a crystal 3.6864 oscillator and a sound transformer. Last but not least, I needed content for my transmission, distinct enough to be recognised in the overwhelming aether noise and among many faded radio stations.

This is how my AM transmitter looks like.

With an amplified AM receiver and using separate wire antennas, and separate grounds I succeeded in receiving a faded signal. The further from the source of the transmission I moved, the fainter it got, but anyway—I sent it through the wireless, even though it all happened in one room.

Maybe using more power would increase the reception? Maybe the primitive wire antenna was impeding the transmission? Maybe I needed a different oscillator or a better receiver? All this might be solved in next experiments.

radio experiment #1

2010-12-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

After coming back from my holidays in Poland and finishing my dissertation, which pushed my interest towards radio communication, I decided to see for myself what radio really is. I decided that my first step would be to build a radio receiver made from really basic parts—most of which one can find in every household. So I used an empty bottle, a crayon, some copper enameled wire, a headphone (which could be an ordinary telephone headset as well), two pieces of copper cables, two wooden clips and a germanium diode, which was the only professional component that I needed.

The outcome of the experiment looks impressive and so does it work. I managed to receive 2-3 radio stations with it depending on the time of day. Most frequently however, I listened to talkSport at 1053 / 1089 AM in east London. Remarkably, the signal is strong enough, that I did not need to use a ferrite rod to improve its quality and legibility. Well done for myself!

Just before taking this photo above, I happened to receive a strange beeping signal from my neighbourhood. It sounded like a coded transmission. I received that with a shortened coil, which is shown in the photo. What could that be???

back to live!

2010-12-08T19:52:00.000-08:00

Back to live!
For a shamefully long time I neglected this space. I wish to make up for it now... for myself, to be really exact. So there it is—a strong and solemn resolution to summarise the development of my dissertation titled: Lingua Extraterrestris—lessons in universal communication or the designer’s understanding of CETI in science and fiction, to recapitulate on all the experiments I managed to conduct over autumn, and finally to document the progress of my final project this year.

Noisecode statement

2010-08-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

After long holidays back to work.

I started to work on an exhibition version of Noisecode. Apart from improving and simplifying the applet and the keyboard, I created big-resolution version of Noisecode letters. I am planning to print a poster with one statement written in different codes, suggesting what Noisecode is, that it is an alternative for alphabet and what is its structure. I am still working on what the statement should tell.

Noisecode film

2010-05-13T17:31:00.000-07:00

Just a week ago I made this film showing how does the Noisecode platform work with most of its functionality. Many thanks to my friend, Jessika, for her help with filming and editing!

Noisecode is all about code in language and transliteration—switching from one code to another while retaining initial content. It is to defamiliarise (V. Shklovski) language we use on everyday basis without paying attention to its constructed forms. Noisecode is aimed to make it's user think what is alphabet that she/he uses almost unnoticeably and what it could have been instead if not ABC...

Noisecode applet

2010-05-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

Here is the link to the latest Noisecode applet developed in Processing.
It is combined with a virtual custom Noisecode keyboard, so it is possible to exercise all it's functionality.

It is either for Mac:
http://www.marekkultys.com/applet/02/noisecode_0514a.app.zip

and for Windows:
http://www.marekkultys.com/applet/02/noisecode_0514a.zip

Although I made all effort to clear the applet from bugs, I cannot take any responsibility for possible surprises caused by the applet on your computer.

Noisecode keyboard

2010-05-13T16:35:00.000-07:00

The main part of Noisecode media platform I've recently developed is a hacked and customised keyboard which I have got from my friend, Jessika.

It consists of four parts.
part 1—standard QWERTY keyboard, which all are familiar with. It is in its usual place on my keyboard and looks just like all of them. Nothing new and surprising—you'll know what it does and how to use it.

part 2—noise key set, on far right of my customised keyboard. It has 7 keys, each coding a single shape/colour of a noise. Hitting two noise keys produces a pair of noises coding a single letter according to language currently used.

part 3—languages: three keys positioned in the top part of my keyboard should be used to change the language of Noisecode transliteration. As for now there is English, Polish and Italian coding available.

part 4—transformations column: the heart of my customised keybard. Facilitates all possible transformations supported by Noisecode application: speech to text (provided the computer has a speech recognition software installed), text to speech, text to noise, text to shapes, shapes to noise, shapes to text. This part link part 1. and part 2. together. The output always depends on the selection made in part 3. of the keyboard.

platform

2010-05-13T15:16:00.000-07:00

Long time passed since the last post. This was due to travel, writing and really intense development works. Now I can show you where Noisecode went.
First of all Noisecode needed a step away from the computer. I generally believe that the less contact with computer we have while experiencing digital media—the better. Apart from that I've been thinking of a way to integrate all media in which Noisecode is existing (sound, speech, text, colour and shape) in one place, in order to experience its capabilities in whole.
A multimedia platform existing in real space beside the computer is an answer to these two issues. It consists of 4 elements (display, speaker, microphone and a keyboard), so somehow a standard notebook could easily be such platform, but my plan is to built my own custom keyboard that could suggest what Noisocode is all about.

manfred mohr: P-122

2010-03-14T08:12:00.000-07:00

During the vibrant period of 1969–73 Manfred Mohr, one of the precursors of digital art, created a series of algorithm-based works, in which a computer-driven calculation found its visual manifestation in print. Thereby he produced rules to code information.

This is an example of Mohr's work which he describes as follows:
Lines touching the horizontal base line are associated to the numbers 0-9. Lines which do not touch the horizontal base line and therefore are between 2 vertical lines are associated to the letters of the alphebet A-Z. In P122 letters and numbers are chosen randomly, thus creating a random text.

Mohr's thinking about a process of coding is very similar to mine. In my case though, content is equally important addressing questions of the nature of our language.

You can view more of Mohr's works here: http://www.emohr.com/ww4_out.html

noisecode: IT+EN and PL+IT dna

2010-03-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

Having transcribed a third language, I can now look for new noisecode DNA patterns inside these languages. Here is the Italian—English chromosome set and Polish—Italian for comparison.

noisecode: IT

2010-03-09T12:58:00.000-08:00

After considerably long time (and with help of Davide Iemmola, my friend from CSM–MACD) I managed to code Italian alphabet. This posed rather different difficulties than in case of Polish alphabet, as instead of compressing the alphabet to fit my set of 28 variables (suited perfectly for English!) I had to extend the content. I managed to do this in a truly surgical fashion by throwing 5 noises away. My decision was to cut on the double-noise pairs, so the only doubles to remain would be 'space' and 'start' which remain constant in each language coding.

As said before, Italian alphabet consists of 21 letters (ABCDEFGHILMNOPQRSTUVZ), 10 digraphs (ch, ci, gh, gi, gl, gn, ha, qu, sc, zz) and 3 trigraphs (gli, sch, sci). These rules helped with assigning right letters to right noises.

noisecode: interlingual chromosomes

2010-02-28T19:26:00.000-08:00

There is an analogy between alphabets and DNA code in terms of how information is encoded with a closed set of certain variables. This can be observed in noisecode.

After filtering text through noisecode.en and noisecode.pl I found out that some patterns can be distinguished in which noises indicate various letters according to language code. After investigating the particular case of English-Polish noisecode relationship I produced what can be seen as 'noisecode interlingual chromosomes'.

There is 14 noisecode.en-pl chromosomes of varied length. Two types of noisecode chromosomes can be distinguished:
• loop chromosome—in which characters occurring in both languages form a closed interchanging path;
• open chromosome—in which opening and closing characters are specific to one of the alphabets only.

The general rule here is: the more chromosomes there is and the shorter they are—the better the transcription from one language via noisecode to the other. The most straightforward transcription depending on many short chromosomes can be produced by languages that have the least specific characters possible and the smallest number of digraph/trighraph/etc. rules.

noisecode: interlingual faultiness

2010-02-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

Having a fixed set of variables (nucleobases in nucleic acids of DNA / zeroes and ones in informatics / letters in alphabet / noises in noisecode) we can encode with its use any piece of information we want. Information can be also transcribed from one code to another, providing the codes conform with one aother.
Since transcribing Polish into noisecode I have been able to experiment with two languages. Interestingly enough, what proved to be most fascinating now is the faultiness of transcribing from English into Polish and the other way round via noisecode. These are three examples of what happens:

• >HELLO_WORLD> is transcribed into a set of noises according to noisecode.en;
• transcribing this set noises back into letters but using noisecode.pl rules gives an output of: >ZUFFA_OASF[łż]>;
• transcribing >HELLO_WORLD> into a set of noises according to noisecode.pl ans then filtering it back through noisecode.en produces: >CUGGW_QWZGS>.

• >NOISECODE> processed through noisecode.en;
• noisecode.en set put through noisecode.pl: >JAILUHA[łż]U>.
• >NOISECODE> processed through noisecode.pl;
• noisecode.pl set put through noisecode.en: >PWIRUVWSU>.

• >PAŹDZIERNIK> (October in Polish) processed through noisecode.pl;
• noisecode.pl set put through noisecode.en: >NOHFSHIUZPIK>.
Note: there is an extra letter in the noisecode.pl-en output. This is due to double-coding of Polish special characters which are indicated by a set of two pairs of noises. In this particular case it is: Ź = [Z]+[ćńóśź].
• >PAŹDZIERNIK> processed through noisecode.en;
• noisecode.en set put through noisecode.pl: >N[ąę]R[łż]RIUSPIK>.
Note: the reverse situation occurs in this case. In order to transcribe letter Ź into noisecode.en it has to be simplified—therefore, Ź becomes Z in the noisecode.en output.

noisecode: PL

2010-02-25T13:32:00.000-08:00

Noisecode covers now a second language—Polish.
Polish contemporary alphabet contains 32 letters. There are 9 unique characters with diacritic symbols (Ą, Ć, Ę, Ł, Ń, Ó, Ś, Ź, Ż), and there is no Q, V and X—this makes a total surplus of 6 characters in comparison to English alphabet. Due to this number noisecode had to be either extended by a new noise, or special characters had to be combine-coded by a sequence of a base letter and a diacritic symbol. I chose the latter option, mainly because having kept a constant set of noises enables me to contrast and compare noisecode.pl with noisecode.en. Therefore, 9 characters in noisecode.pl are expressed with a set of two pairs of noises instead of a single pair as in case of standard letters.

Yellow lines indicate combine-coded special characters:
base letter linked with a diacritic symbol.
Grey lines indicate dighraph rules.
Dotted lines indicate a trigraph rule.

Apart from the set of noises used to code letters in noisecode.pl, there are some other important similarities shared with noisecode.en:
• all vowels are composed with the 'mains hum 60Hz' noise (with the 'Hum+Hum' pair coding the diacritic symbol used for A and E only and transforming them into nasal vowels);
• coding of start/stop and space stays the same;
• the digraph and a trigraph rule is used to code letter clusters.

Note two significant differences between noisecode.PL and niosecode.en which may have great impact on the final audio form of each language:
• Polish alphabet contains more characters and, therefore—according to the alphabet principle—...
• ...there is much less digraph/trighraph rules in Polish alphabet (PL=8/1 while EN=35/5).

noisecode: towards human

2010-02-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

My system is working. You can play with it on your own computer
(see the post from 15th Feb about a keyboard).
Now the only problem with this is... that the whole thing is stuck to a computer!
I wish to push my work out of this incomprehensible machine and let it exist in some more familiar, more trivial and—above all—in more human devices.

Provided that noisecode is the soul, then I consider these things as a possible body:
• keyboard,
• megaphone (bull horn),
• telephone,
• typeface,
• speakers in the underground's carriage.

Apart from that I recognise a need to assign noisecode to another language. In such case it will be Polish, not only because this is my mother tongue which I know well enough to understand rules of orthography, pronunciation and accentuation, but also due to how it is different from English in terms of the alphabetic principle, variety of dialects, vowel length.

noisecode: brief recap

2010-02-16T08:52:00.000-08:00

Noise used to be a distortion / pollution.
Can it be used to communicate?
Noise can be defined by a graphic shape—spectrum.

∇ ∇ ∇

Visual manifestation of language (written form)
becomes translated into an audio abstract form.
— — —
Abstract language becomes abstract noise...
NOISECODE
Abstract noise becomes abstract communication.
— — —
Everyday language is translated into new abstract
instantiation, which serves discovering language
properties that usually stay unknowing.

∆ ∆ ∆

Language has various manifestations.
A visual representation of language is the alphabet
consisting of graphemes which are abstract symbols.

noisecode: why not phonetics?

2010-02-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

One of the most challenging questions I've been usually asked regarding the noisecode project is: why not use the phonetic alphabet (IPA) instead of the letter (grapheme) alphabet—it would relate to noisecode better, as both would be of aural quality. My answer to such questions is simple: the main idea of noisecode project is to give an audio instantiation to the visual manifestation of a natural language—hence the 26-letter English alphabet.

Apart from that there are several minor reasons:
— phonetic transcription varies according to dialectic details of language (e.g. RP–General American—Cockney. This makes the phonetic alphabet imprecise and not universal;
—English letter alphabet has 26 variables, while English RP phonetic alphabet consists of 24 consonants and 23 vowels (plus 6 additional sounds used in foreign words). I picked the smaller alphabet, as the higher the numer of variables in the code, the more noises needs to be used / overlapped, which leads to decreasing respectively the distinctiveness / clarity of produced sounds.
—letter alphabet is commonly known unlike the phonetic IPA alphabet which is rather a specialist knowledge.

noisecode: keyboard

2010-02-15T19:31:00.000-08:00

The first applet simulating noisecode keyboard can be viewed here:

http://www.marekkultys.com/applet/01/applet/index.html

Up to now noisecode has been available in 'read-only' version.
Now it has became interactive, enabling the viewer to translate any text.

toshi ichiyanagi: expo '70

2010-02-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

This is an excerpt of Toshi Ichiyanagi's piece composed for an installation at the expo '70 international exhibition in Osaka, Japan. What draws my attention here in particular is how noise has been used to denote language, or—to be more precise—how language has been distorted by the use of noise, creating a melodic noise—language entity.

Recording distilled from the 'Tone Generation' series of audio programmes by Ian Halliwell and Simon James.

yesterday: pacing

2010-02-03T12:27:00.000-08:00

This is a second attempt to encode text using noisecode. Here the length of single noise sounds are adjusted to keep up with pacing of the song. As visualised typographically—certain noises have been extended in time to match the lilt, while others have been respectively compressed.
The overall effect should mimic singing of lyrics in 'Yesterday'.

yesterday: monospace

2010-02-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

This is the first attempt to translate a commonly known piece of text into noisecode using the new English digraph and trigraph rules. I chose 'Yesterday' by the Beatles for it's steady rhythm and varied syllable pacing in the two initial stanzas—vowels can be heard occurring with a certain regularity. Apart from that there is a significant number of digraphs that could be exposed in it.

In this particular case all noises used for encoding letters are in monospace form—each noise has the constant length of 0.2 second. This is particularly useful for hearing rhythmic occurrence of vowels marked by the distinguishably higher pitch (mains hum 60Hz) heard in vowel noises.

noisecode: translatability?

2010-02-01T02:11:00.000-08:00

Now, having already assigned noise pairs to typographic representations of letters , there are some further translation schemes possible (or impossible) to explore, such as:
typography—noise graphic shape;
typography—noise sound;
typography—impulse (ascending-descending);
typography—light spectrum;
typography—binary sequence;
typography—scent(?);
typography—flavor(?);
typography—touch(?);
typography—movement (dynamics, vibration);
and all different configurations consisting of these right-hand-side codes.
This is, though, still an open area for possible exploration and reinterpretation.

noisecode: the ellipse of noises

2010-02-01T02:02:00.000-08:00

Finally I managed to assign noise pairs to letters. This wasn't an easy task. Starting with vowels, it took me quite a while after I finally knew what goes where. Well, there's the final diagram presenting the whole alphabet with it's typographical and noise-graphic representation.

noisecode: vowels and digraphs

2010-01-24T19:19:00.000-08:00

After abandoning the typographic method for assigning 28 noises to 26 alphabet + 2 punctuation signs, I felt lost and rather helpless about moving forward with my noisecode project. I considered phonetics as a key to the problem, but that would need me to develop at least twice as many noises (and likely to produce 3-element variables instead of current 2-element ones), as well as abandon my idea of creating a written alphabetical code.

As written realm provided to little rules for me to base noisecode on and phonetics offered to many of them, I decided to search for a solution in between. Ultimately, it is vowels and digraphs that should be credited for solving the problem.

Vowels
There are 5 vowels in English alphabet (A, E, I, O, U), as well as 2 semi-vowels (W, Y) depending on the word they appear in. In total there is 7 letters which act as vowels, which is defining a syllable. As noisecode is based on a set of 7 noises composed into unique pairs, I decided to assign one particular noise to become typical for vowels only. I chose mains hum, because even when accompanied by other noise it is still well head and distinguishable. Thereby, I hope to strengthen the specific language rhythm that will be heard in texts translated to noisecode.

Digraphs
"A digraph is a pair of characters used to write one phoneme (distinct sound) or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined". (source: Wikipedia)

There is 41 English language digraphs which I used as rules in noisecode:
ae / ai / au / aw / ay / cc / ch / ci / ck / dg / ea / ei / eo / eu / ew / ey / gm / gn /
ie / kn / mb / ng / oa / oe / oi / ou / ow / oy / ph / ps / qu / rh / sc / sh / si / th /
ti / ue / ui / wh / wr.
Apart from that I used 5 English trigraph rules: igh / ous / sch / ssi / tch.
The rule is a formal requirement for both noise pairs coding a digraph to have at least one common elemental noise, e.g. TH digraph consists of T and H which both are coded by two noise pairs consisting of one common element (grey noise) and two other noises being the second element in each pair (brown noise in T, white noise—H).
The only exception to this rule is OUS trigraph, where there is no common noise for all three letters, however each pair of subsequent letters has the rule applied: mains hum is the common element in OU-, pink noise provides the rule for -US.

Whether vowels and digraphs rules would prove to be viable solutions to my problem with the method of assigning noises to letters, this is what next translations into noisecode will show. I should create some samples shortly.

IFs: excercising creative approaches and media

2010-01-24T18:25:00.000-08:00

What if machines could read and reastour emotional states?

What if machines had its' own emotions to communicate with humans?

What if machines objectified humans in the same way we personify machines?

What if machines reacted to us personifying them?

What if we could translate non-material and obscure digital content
(e.g. Cellular Automata) using physical and familiarly analog objects?

What if CA rules were defined by specific physical world properties?

What if blogosphere or social networks could be translated into CA?

What if machines were not reliable, could be mistaken or even cheat us?

What if machine and human became integrated on an organic level in which
machine's blueprint became part of human's DNA and development of both
was interdependent?

arduino: traffic lights

2010-01-24T17:04:00.000-08:00

During Arduino workshop I developed a traffic lights set with 3 different modes controlled by an ambient light sensor and a potentiometer:
• day-light mode—green light and red light flashing phases are the same length—active when reading from the light sensor are above a certain threshold;
• night-light mode—green light phase is twice as long as the red light phase—active when reading from the light sensor are lower than the threshold (sensor gets covered with a finger in the video);
• alert-mode—only the yellow light flashes—active when reading from the potentiometer is below an assigned value.

The whole piece is quite simple, but proved quite useful to understand how to actually write code myself. The code can be viewed >>here<<

first things first

2010-01-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

Due to some transcendental reasons the opening of this blog was chaotic and regardless of my multiple interests to which I dedicate this space.
So first things first.

My current work is currently based around two major areas of interest:
• coding language;
• artificial life.

Coding language—this is a continuation of my 1st term answer to the 'tone and noise' brief. The purpose of this brief was: 'to explore how we can push and experience one quality of language through another and thereby extend what communications can be and what it can do'. Since November, when I produced my answer and crits took place, some radical improvements have been made which affected the very core of the project.
I will document its development by tagging it with: noisecode.

Artificial life—is a broad discipline where computer science, design and natural sciences overlap. This seems to be my favourite cocktail for which I have been searching for quite a while and just discovered it on the MACD course at CSM. This blog is mainly devoted to documenting my activity in the field of A-life which is going to define the context of my final project at CSM as well.
All posts relevant to this area will be tagged with: A-life.

I believe these two areas of my interest share at least two common features.
One is strongly rooted in my very personal approach to design:
developing a working system,
the second one has been always attracting me to design:
design as a process of translation.
With the help of this blog I want to trace the development of my two initial ideas and dream of a happy-end when both will ultimately fuse at one point.
If this happens, I will apply for a phd at MIT.

anticipating future

2010-01-19T07:47:00.001-08:00

These are my predictions regarding what can happen in the future in terms of: robotics, wireless communication and virtual societies. The predictions are made with use of four different methods of anticipating future:

• self-fulfilling prophecy—what we believe that would happen is exactly what will happen (according to Robert K. Merton);

• historiosophy (philosophy of history)—thesis + antythesis = synthesis (according to Hegel);

• finding dominant progress trends—method mastered by K. Marx and today used by A. Negri and M. Hardt;

• extrapolation—projecting current development patterns into the future and defining what will need to change on that basis.

creative approach—————medium

2010-01-18T03:34:00.000-08:00

This is a list of creative approaches and related media that define my area
of interest in digitality (under constant reformulation):

A-life—————generative graphics
A-life—————game/process design
A-life—————spatial design
linguistics—————sound design
communication design————graphic design

3 maps

2010-01-12T06:22:00.001-08:00

A map of fields of my interests.

A map of creators relevant to my interests.

Anticipating future of the fields of my interest.