P r o j e c t s : W a l l  o f  S o u n d

Wall of Sound is an environmentally installed suite of mechanical, sound emitting ‘instruments’ that users can ‘play’ through an interface on their mobile phones. The opportunity to jam in real time with other users in the immediate vicinity creates a real world manifestation of mediated social networking.

This installation also begins to address social and cultural imbalances characterized as the mobile device: the diffusion gap inherent in class and economic uptake of new technology. Some of the instruments are available only to users with sophisticated devices (and the knowledge of how to use them), while other instruments can be controlled through simple phone calls or SMS messages. Certain instruments will also be installed that are meant to be played by users with no devices, by banging on a drum for example and introducing that signal as data into the system.

Iterations:

1. Manual Action: Various percussion instruments are available on a sound sculpture that users can activate through physical manipulation.

2. Bluetooth Version:
Users download a Bluetooth application for their Bluetooth-enabled phone, which will feature a GUI by which they can issue commands to a Bluetooth server

3. EPBX Version:
Users without Bluetooth-enabled phones can issue commands to the wall by dialing into an EPBX server, which will process touchtone-based commands.

Overall Architecture for Mobile-Activated Use:

1. User chooses an object on the wall using their mobile device (using a Bluetooth application downloaded from the wall, or by dialing into the EPBX server)

2. User ‘plays’ the chosen object using their mobile device (using a GUI interface for Bluetooth version, or by using the device’s buttons for the EPBX version)

3. User’s actions are translated into commands that are then sent to the control server (which contains both a Bluetooth Server and an EPBX server). The server processes the commands using a PUREDATA application and deploys instructions to the PIC hardware via a serial connection

4. PIC hardware sends commands to physically control/affect the chosen object on the wall. Example: if a user programs a sequence of beats on their mobile device to control a drum instrument on the wall, the PIC board would turn a solenoid on and off, causing it to strike the drum in the rhythm pattern specified by the user.