Mapping Sound - Day Two

So today was another day of listening to music clips about sound until we found ourselves in the hand of yet another face and lecturer to talk to us, as he too was a musician focused on pop in his own rights. Clinton Watkins, after his talk he demonstrated a few of his tracks to finish with his music video done by his band, a song called Bees which was an inside joke within his band as he soon revealed to us.With that done it was back to our project and fully editing. Our first focus was the group composition so we could all apply our input into it together as a team and really come up with something that everyone liked. And before the days end we managed to at least come up with an introduction and a theme to work on which was the focus of industrial and natural as we initially planned.

Quick Insight into Group Composition:

Quick Insight into Individual Composition:

Week One - Mapping Sound

So with the first class of the week on the Tuesday I came in ready to learn after reading only a portion of the required reading unfortunately but I went into the lecture to discuss what had crossed my mind as I read the hard copy. Going into class everyone had to say at least one thing on either the Hard Copy or the Internet Reading so I explained about how I never truly appreciated or considered the sound and noise around us and that there was a greater depth that needed to be explored to truly experience life at its' maximum. Or at least I planned to say something around those lines. And after the discussion and a few music clips we were introduced to a famous face, Richard Francis. Expert in sound making and a musician himself in his own rights he talked to his about his life and what he did and what sound and noise was to him. And once that was done we got to truly handle a device called the Zoom H4n. The reason for it's name I'll never know but the device itself is truly amazing. Plugging my headphones into the device and hearing everyone around me was an amazing experience. Feeling like superman for a while felt pretty good being able to hear conversations from afar without even having to be there and hearing the birds themselves properly was something really amazing. So getting onto it we made our four man group quickly as instructed and moved onto recording sounds to get it over with immediately. I was in a group with Versha Naidu, Daniel Lee and Yoshin Naidoo. So we visited metalwork shops, Construction sites and of course Albert Park to follow up on both natural and industrial sounds and went into the studio doing a bit of work to leave the rest for tomorrow.

Image of the Zoom H4N and its functionality below:

No Class! Three Day Break and Relaxation =)

Sound Walk

Sound walk you say? Now that sounded pretty peculiar at first but it had it's reasons. Now this is an exercise that most people would never approach unless told to, what we had to do was explore and walk about with our legs but, for once without our eyes this time, figuratively speaking initially. Walking about what we had to do was open our ears and listen to everything around us with great focus. Appreciate the things that we never truly considered with our ears only. And, of course to make sure this worked talking was prohibited so we could fully experience the sound walk.
One location that has affected me in some way was the most simple of locations, one people commonly use as a means of making life easier which was also a minus on the fitness department and it only went up and down and never left or right. An elevator. So this is where you can usually find yourself standing there in awkward situations at times if the silence is too great just like it was today. But, hey good experience nonetheless. So silent as we were we had to to turn up the volume on our ears and really listen to everything. The shaking of the elevator as it pulled us up by the strings. The very drone of the elevator as it lifted us higher and higher or lower once we decided upon it. But, the effect was there being able to stay still added to the silence, something that I too never looked at before. Silence in itself is a form of noise which is something that became evident to me as I stood there listening trying not to move a muscle at all. Much like the sound we consider white noise, Silence too has become a form of white noise to use that we can either pay attention to or ignore it as we usually do. A thought process I would never typically participate in before. And as the the doors open sound seemed to almost pour in immediately from outside almost as if the silence quietly shattered just as when the door close the noise outside the elevator seemed to evaporate. This definitely affected my thought process in ways I would never consider.

Anechoic Chamber

Progressing through the course I learn more and more about what's present in our world and what it can truly offer which is something I'm grateful more as they make every effort possible to provide us with the staff and resources necessary which is something I've really come to learn. As today soon taught me the more I participated. Today we were split into two separate groups where my group was lead by Zoe to The University of Auckland where we were introduced to and lectured by George Dodd and Gian Schmid separately. We with first talked to about the sound around us and questioned as to what it really is, the factors of noise and if it can be separated into two categories, if noises can be treated as wanted or unwanted or natural and unnatural. And as the time passed on we were soon taught about the ear and how it functions bristles and all with our very ear drums. But the highlight of the day soon arrived as we were taken to the Anechoic Chamber in a group of 8 where we learned that Echo was the main focus of the word taking out the An and the IC in the word Anechoic for a reason. Stepping in the pressure changed drastically as the room expensive as it was demonstrated that sound reflecting off walls was the reason how we heard and because the room was designed so that nothing reflected.. The sound itself almost seemed to be sucked out like a vacuum and it felt like I had either become deafer or that my earphones were already plugged into my very ear drums. An experience I won't soon forget.

Presentation!!

So today was finally presentation day and it's the real deal! For a moment I believed that the presentations weren't going to happen based on a mail I received but I was soon proven wrong but I had nothing to do but to present. On arrival I realized that I had to mail Rob that me and a Daniel were a team but due to carelessness I didn't check the mail for that but fortunately he still let us sign our name up provided we were one of the first groups up which was my initial plan. So getting it over with like I wanted we presented, he asked, and we answered and we were done. And with that after the remainder of the presentations we were done as we were soon introduced to another lecturer that came in personally for us and our new project. Our new project focus was sound and it's role in our society that we don't truly pay attention to and the lecturer was Zoe, someone who has practiced and demonstrated great skill in the area. Otherwise known as knowledge in Aural Terrains.

Relief!

So I came in knowing that I would have to possibly present, and even though the application was ready and I believed to be ready. I was all too aware that in the past I wasn't always the best speaker around. But to my relief we discovered that it was only second years presenting today because they had a certain class to attend tomorrow so another day of being able to relax to come into uni with a fresh mindset fortunately enough for me.

Last Day! Simple Painting Program!

So we came together on our final day before presentation with the possible chance of having to present tomorrow meaning, we had to be one hundred percent finished and ready to talk on the Tuesday if we have to. So with one final discussion over our application we sat to think over if we missed anything that would be useful to have in a simple paint program and for a while nothing came to mind. But, as the time drew near our minds clicked on something that was essential to all painting programs. A means of undoing mistakes.. And that would mean being able to create a new page. Or in the case of an iPhone application, being able to reset to a new page. So what we needed was a button that could clear the entire page or either just swap to a new view. So we went onto the idea of swapping to a new view only to realize halfway that there was no point when it didn't clean the page when swapping out.. So we decided on a total reset button that changed the page back to it's original white state. And there we sat to agree that we had truly finally finished a Simple Painting Application worthy of presenting tomorrow. Finally we happily left ready to present tomorrow, or at least hope to be ready for.

Simple Painting Application - Day Four

So here I am again at uni ready to finish what I can for this project returning more prepared than the last with each eventual return. We had created a simple painting application that implemented both a background changer via RGB slider scale and a drawing function with choices of Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black. But we still weren't satisfied quite yet with the amount we had achieved so we aimed to create something more. In order to match the Black color we of course complimented it with a White color for purpose of an extra function. We wanted our programming to emit somewhat of a fancy aura and we decided that the only way to do that is if we could implement an easy to follow layout. This was the part that I was typically dominant in the designing which is where my know how all though not much was necessary in Interface Builder. By utilizing the View Windows one blank page was created for the iPhone to show a blank screen first. And only when you first touch the screen do you start drawing. But.. We needed a way to bring back the menu which we used the title tools to create for the various color choices. So with utilizing two View Windows and the double touch or, double click in this situation we managed to bring the menu back in all it's glory. So with a job well done we were reasonably satisfied leaving today with the idea of future discussions.

Simple Painting Application - Day Three

So this was our third day of returning to university during the holidays which wasn't entirely favorable but once again necessary but with the weekend to think about what we had to do we had a fresh mind and new ideas. So we decided that although we couldn't play with the width we followed through with an idea that was present in Photoshop. We wanted to insert images, as a means of a substitute for a pencil and brush, so like Photoshop we wanted to have the possibility of choosing to draw with a star or maybe a leaf as a pencil and brush. And so we worked on that, we managed to develop the image button which was a start, but found ourselves at yet another dead end for an idea too complicated for us to achieve. We weren't able to find a way to connect the image into our Xcode and Interface Builder both at the same time so it was time to implicate our other idea which was changing the background color. This was inspired by the most basic of paint programs, Paint itself, which like the paint bucket tool, you can change the background color so we decided to work on that and with great joy we came up with the idea to create an RGB slider. Based on where you slide it on the Red, Green or Blue scale, you can change the background color completely to your own preference which was a good moral boost altogether for us. So with the days end it was time to leave and come back again another day.

Simple Painting Application - Work Time

So upon deciding to come into uni once again with our minds already bustling with ideas and already on track from having to work on it yesterday we came in discussing our ideas first to enhance everything we already had. Mutually we decided that we wanted to implicate a function to change the width of our lines. So we had to do this through xCode of course and we attempted to change the width by inputing the code of line width in CGContext with applying a set number in front of the set color. But this resulted in every line coming up as a single width regardless of what we entered so eventually but unfortunately we agreed that width was something that we weren't able to implicate despite how much we wanted to so this meant that of course we had to move on to a new idea to implicate but after spending the day on width and having to leave reasonably early there was nothing else we could do today but think up of what was possible.

Holidays - Programming

Unfortunately, but necessarily enough here I am in uni completing what I can on the assignment with Daniel Lee. After discussing over what would be the best to approach from the list we first decided on designing a weather application as we soon moved into creating a simple painting application when we discovered that there were more opportunities for us with the painting application. Our first job was to read over the handbook to see what was involved for us with a simple painting application and we started from there. Initially we were able to begin with the blank page to draw on but in a single black lined color unfortunately, and this meant that we had to play around with the programming some more to understand it and to create something special by the end of it. So by putting in the effort and hard work by the days end we had fully adopted ourselves into creating this painting application. We came out with being able to draw with red, blue, green, yellow and black as our final result after reading thoroughly through the handout that Rob gave us. So with the days end we set out to plan another day to come into uni to do some more work.

iPhone Programming - Assigment 2!

After the hard work and effort I applied to my stopwatch I handed it in on the Tuesday happily on CD to Rob Beck hoping that it come off as well as I planned it to. So with that done it was back to learning more about what iPhone Applications and what we would be able to do with it. And as time passed on we familiarized ourselves with the many functions ranging from sliders and buttons to understanding how messages functioned and engaged from the programming. An extremely fulfilling experience and one not to forget as the years go on. But now came the second assignment with requirements to fulfill as per usual but now done in two man groups. So I teamed up with Daniel Lee as we set out to finish as much as we could initially and to finish the rest throughout the holidays as this is a holiday assignment.