Crowded Conversations

Crowded city streets, concerts, busy train stations...
We often find ourselves in places with bustling crowds, filled with people going to and fro. Footsteps, breathing, laughter, talking....Enmeshed in these crowds of mumblings, our ears sometimes pick up a few specific conversations, some sad, some humorous, some profound, but all alike because they are personal to a certain degree.

Using two handheld knobs, two participants can interact with one another to discover those hidden conversations that our keen sense of hearing allow us to decipher.

Crowded Conversations is part of the "This is Not a Knob" Final Project. We were asked to use one physical sensor (a knob), and one media effector (the MAKE Control Board). We were to create an interactive mini exhibit where a knob would affect and audience either through visual or audio manipulation.

Using two knobs, our team (Ping Tsung Li, Yu-Seung Kim and Mari Nakano) knobs that would affect sounds, in particular, the sound of crowds and the sound of individual conversations within those crowds. It is up to the two people participating in the experience to find those small conversations within the crowd. Is it timing? Is it volume? Is it synchronization that allows users to find those interesting conversations? It's up to the users to discover this as they sit inside an area where they are confined by dark curtains. You have your sense of hearing and the side by side contact with your partner to help you uncover those crowded conversations.

view more images of the final projects on my flickr page