HEAR; NO SEER
Hear; No Seer is an interactive installation with the usage of light and sound play. It tests the audience on their visual perception and hearing – what you hear might not be what you see.
The idea came about when I wanted to do an interactive installation with light and sound. I thought of the arcade game – Jubeat, a 4x4 grid with a set of 16 buttons. There’s a display of cues and is part of the user interface. The user needs to press the buttons where the animation is shown in order to proceed.
Very often, we associate our 5 senses together. Whenever we talk to or hear a sound, we will proceed to look at the spot where the sound is generated from. I wanted to tap on that play. If the user relies too much on their sight, they will not be able to hear the sound. The LED cubes will be lighted randomly – to cause visual distractions. A random speaker will be played and the user will need to tap on which speaker they think the sound is coming from.
I used for my project. Initially I wanted a 3x3 grid – total of 9 cubes for my project. However, due to the limitations of Arduino’s digital pins, I was only able to power 5 cubes. I used 2 arduinos as well – 1 for the speakers and touch sensors, and the other for LED cubes.
The Arduino for speakers and sensors were connected to the laptop, to be connected to Processing.
In Processing, I did up a start-up screen of the activity – with information of how to play the game. Following that, a score counter is being displayed. Upon tapping the correct speaker location, the score goes up by 10 points. The game screen ends at 150 points.
Initially, I wanted to create a Level 2 to this game, where there are 2 sounds played and the user needs to tap both at the same time. However, there was some technical issues and it couldn’t play both sounds. Thus, I just stuck to having 1 level.
