2011-04-12

The End of Hearing: radio implant working!

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

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!

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

2011-04-08

The End of Hearing: radio implants



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

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?