Harry Solomons

Week 5

Following the midpoint last week, we decided that we were comfortable with pursuing the modular seating idea more seriously. To that end, I took on responsibility for the sound design, and began by interviewing Eddie Boyce, a composer who works with generative and aleatoric music. Eddie gave the following key insights for developing the piece:

  • Character is particularly important when involving children in the design, and matching sound and shape is one way to do that
  • What we should look at designing is closer to adaptive video game soundtracks than generative, deterministic compositions

Following this, I gathered some pieces, particularly building on the suggestion of video game soundtracks, that could serve as inspiration.

https://youtu.be/DpYBhX0UH04
Terry Riley’s In C is a prime example of the way in which component parts fit together in an aleatoric composition
Proteus is a game that makes heavy use of its generative and adaptive soundtrack in storytelling
Ape Out does similar, but realised through percussion instead of harmony
The Mr Men series of books shows how shape and colour can be used to directly inform character
The game Thomas Was Alone does similar, but by further restricting the shapes to various sizes and shapes of rectangle

At the same time, we visited LCC’s 3D workshop in order to explore possible materials with which we could build the chairs. Realising that cost strictly limited what was available to us in large quantities, and thinking that we would prefer to see the effect of our design at scale, rather than intricately realised, we decided to stick with cubes, as they would be the easiest to build in bigger numbers for a lower price. This stage of the process is something I haven’t dealt with in other, primarily digital design spaces, and so the material and cost investigation is something very important for me to take forward in practice.