Restricted vision goggles

Following on from discussion of presenting the objects in an environment that emphasises the sound over the visual, I revisited the snow goggles I had seen on one of my visits to the British Museum.

The Menil exhibit in Houston tries to re-create the limitless feeling of the Arctic where the horizon is hard to determine and it’s easy to get disoriented by the blinding snow. For centuries, different Inuit cultures have used “snow goggles” to help them see in such a bright white environment. The narrow slits constrict the wearer’s field of vision and reduce light to the optic nerve. Similar goggles are still used today.

https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/18-upside-down-arctic-realities

Research Workshop – Critical Thinking

A couple of sketches for the final ‘We Are Here’ presentation, with contributions from the Critical Thinking workshop group. The concept of presenting the objects in a dark space would help enhance the audio content.

Also useful for the final show piece is this Scientific American article about the brain compensating for the loss of one sense by enhancing others.

Super Powers for the Blind and Deaf.
The brain rewires itself to boost the remaining senses. If one sense is lost, the areas of the brain normally devoted to handling that sensory information do not go unused — they get rewired and put to work processing other senses. Brain imaging studies show the visual cortex in the blind is taken over by other senses, such as hearing or touch

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superpowers-for-the-blind-and-deaf/

Arduino research 17/05/2018

Today I’ve been looking at how to build the various Arduino circuits for the Space Rocks, and at some examples of relevant projects.

I made some basic sensor experiments with a Light-dependent resistor, ultimately using this code from the Make: Getting Started with Arduino book.

// Example 06b: Blink LED at a rate specified by the
// value of the analogue input

# define LED 9 // the pin for the LED

int val = 0; // variable used to store the value
 // coming from the sensor

void setup() {
 // put your setup code here, to run once:

pinMode(LED, OUTPUT); // LED is as an output

// note Analogue pins are
 // automatically set as inputs
 }

void loop() {
 // put your main code here, to run repeatedly:

val = analogRead(0); // read the value from the sensor

analogWrite(LED, val/4); // turn the LED on at
 // the brightness set
 // by the sensor

delay(10); // stop the program for some time

}

And this circuit:

LDR - LED circuit diagram
LDR – LED circuit diagram
LDR - LED circuit
LDR – LED circuit

Also stumbled upon How to Build an Arduino synthesizer with Mozzi library

The Mozzi library looks super-useful for sound generation:

Currently your Arduino can only beep like a microwave oven. Mozzi brings your Arduino to life by allowing it to produce much more complex and interesting growls, sweeps and chorusing atmospherics. These sounds can be quickly and easily constructed from familiar synthesis units like oscillators, delays, filters and envelopes.

You can use Mozzi to generate algorithmic music for an installation or performance, or make interactive sonifications of sensors, on a small, modular and super cheap Arduino, without the need for additional shields, message passing or external synths.

Note to self to also check out the Mozzi examples gallery.