Embedded Acoustic Interfaces
Fachmodul
Instructor: Clemens Wegener
Credits: 6 ECTS, 2 SWS
Capacity: max. 10 students
Language: English
Location: Online Streaming and Material
First Meeting: tba
Description
We are constantly surrounded by electronic interfaces: elevators, automatic doors, ticket machines, remote controls, voice recognition systems, etc. With a high degree of networking between our devices, interfaces must seamlessly integrate into ecosystems of information acquisition and processing. Thus, ergonomic sensor placement, which integrates discreetly into our accustomed environment, is gaining ground.
The course explores the possibilities of this ergonomic, embedded interaction using the example of acoustic interfaces. We will develop electronic sensor systems for the detection of vibrations (structure-borne sound) in integrated surfaces and experiment with machine learning methods to differentiate between vibration gestures (e.g. knocking noises, friction noises, etc.).
The Course will be taught in video sessions and regular assignments every week.
If you are interested, please send a letter of motivation and portfolio to clemens.wegener ( at ) uni-weimar (dot) de.
Admission requirements
Things you need
- computer or laptop
- Teensy 4.0 + audio shield
- a pair of headphones or speakers
- a soldering iron would be a plus
We will use either the Teensy 4.0 hardware platform or the Raspberry Pi to classify sounds in the environment. Therefore, a budget of (30-40€) should be planned for the Teensy and other components.
Educational Requirements
Introductory level of programming is a requirement!
Evaluation
Successful completion of 50% of the assignments. Realization and documentation of a completed semester prototype and a final video presentation. Please refer to the Evaluation Rubric for more details.
Eligible participants
Qualified MFA Medienkunst/-gestaltung, MFA Media Art and Design, MSc MediaArchitecture candidates
Syllabus
- Week 1: Meet and Greet
- Week 2: C++ Fundamentals
- Week 3: Soldering a Piezo Disc Preamplifier
- Week 4: Programming a Clusterer in C++ 1/2
- Week 5: Programming a Clusterer in C++ 2/2
- Week 6: Implementing the Clusterer on the Teensy 4.0
- Week 7: Inspiration Session on Sound Recognition
- Week 8: Presentation of Project Ideas
- Until End: Consultations and Project Work
- TBA: Final presentations and documentation due dates
Course Material
For the time of the course, the material will reside in the internal learning platform and will be released here soon.
Further Reading
Zamborlin, Bruno. 2015. Studies on customisation-driven digital music instruments. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Murray-Smith, Roderick & Williamson, John & Hughes, Stephen & Quaade, Torben. (2008). Stane: Synthesized surfaces for tactile input. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings. 1299-1302. 10.1145/1357054.1357257.
Rasamimanana, N.H., Bevilacqua, F., Schnell, N., Guédy, F., Fléty, E., Maestracci, C., Zamborlin, B., Frechin, J., & Petrevski, U. (2010). Modular musical objects towards embodied control of digital music. Tangible and Embedded Interaction.