I played with a few layers of modulating soundscapes - one is a humpback whale track, the other, samples from a Speak-N-Spell. Not sure how annoying this might get in a longer-playing session, but some kind of cool effects that might be useful to be connected to inputs such as location, speed, vector, group size, etc.
I just realized that last post about soundscape app for iOS sounded horribly pretentious. Wow. Not sure I’ll get to Thing Explainer level, but I’m going to try really hard to break out of jargon.
So. What I was meaning to say was that I’m messing around with a cool iOS app for making computer generated sounds (not music, but not noise). I want to try playing with it to see what kinds of sounds I can make with it, and am wondering about how those sounds might be triggered or changed based on signals such as people moving through a room or something else. I started playing with converting movement into signals and that kind of works. Now I need to figure out what to do with that data - what kinds of sounds or visuals might be interesting in response to what people are doing in a space.
Trying out Soundscaper as a way to explore synthetic modulated ambient soundscapes, to see what kinds of sounds might work for algorithmic generation from spatial data…
http://motion-soundscape.blogspot.ca/2015/02/soundscaper-experimental-sound-mini-lab.html
I’ve been exploring some hacking to prototype a sonification experiment – the idea was to build a way to provide audio biofeedback to shape the soundscape within a space in response to movement and activity. I prototyped a quick mockup using Python and imutils.
It started as a “skunkworks” project idea:
An atrium-sized theremin, so a person (or a few people, or a whole gaggle of people) could make sounds (or, hopefully, music) by moving throughout the atrium. A theremin works by responding to the electrical field in a person – normal-sized theremins respond to hand movements. An atrium-sized theremin might respond to where a person walks or stands in the atrium, or how they move. I have absolutely NO idea how to do this, but think it could be a fun way to gently nudge people to explore motion and position in a space. Bonus points for adding some form of synchronized visualization (light show? Digital image projection? Something else?)
Trying out Soundscaper as a way to explore synthetic modulated ambient soundscapes, to see what kinds of sounds might work for algorithmic generation from spatial data…
Starting a new blog/site to document my train of thought through the CMD PhD program. Projects I’m working on, etc.
Update: well, it started as a separate blog (running on the great Known platform), but I realized I don’t want to be managing separate sites for different things. Simpler is gooder.
So, I exported it all from the Known site, and imported it here in my main blog, under the “notes” category.
Barak, M., & Levenberg, A. (2016). Flexible thinking in learning: An individual differences measure for learning in technology-enhanced environments. Computers & Education, 99, 39–52. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.04.003
Notes:
p.40: we identified three main factors that may indicate a learners’ dispositional inclination to think flexibly in technology-enhanced learning: Acceptance of new or changing technologies (Technology acceptance), Openmindedness to others’ ideas (Open-mindedness), and Adapting to changes in learning situations (Adapting to new situations). — Highlighted May 13, 2016
Poster sessions are an important part of any academic conference - providing a way for researchers (including both faculty and students) to share their research in a format that supports describing methods, discussion, and results as well as fostering discussion about the project. Normally, these posters are printed on large format printers, carefully rolled into tubes for travel, and hung from poster boards or walls in a conference venue. It works, but requires the posters to be completed days (or weeks) ahead of time to allow for layout and printing (and any revisions to fix typos or omissions). It also requires a the content to be static - it’s a printed poster - and the format usually involves a 4’x6’ sheet of paper packed with dense micro-print and footnotes.
It’s been a long process, but the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning opened this morning. The last 4 years have been an intensive planning/collaboration/development/implementation process, with people from many organizations coming together to build on the vision of the Institute. 
From the Institute’s website:
The Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning is dedicated to better understanding and improving student learning. It is both a building and a community that extends well beyond the building’s walls. The Taylor Institute brings together teaching development, teaching and learning research, and undergraduate inquiry learning under one roof. The institute supports building and sharing teaching expertise; integrating technologies to enhance learning; and conducting inquiry to improve student learning. Through the College of Discovery and Innovation, the Taylor Institute offers undergraduate students opportunities for inquiry-based learning, experiential learning and interdisciplinary research.
I've cobbled a few WordPress plugins together, primarily to do stuff on UCalgaryBlogs by exposing built-in WordPress functionality through shortcodes so that people don't have to manually edit themes.
And then I basically ignored the plugins for a few years, because they don't actually do anything, so there's not much to update or fix. But it looks bad if a plugin hasn't been tested with recent versions of WordPress, so I just did some testing of them all. They all work on WP 4.4.2, and I'll re-test after 4.5 drops. I did find some funkiness in one of the plugins, and that's been taken care of (and I made it a bit more generalizable, so yay progress). I'm hoping to give the plugins some more love - I definitely need to spend more time actually building things instead of just talking about the stuff that people do with the things I made a few years ago…
Last night, I officially accepted an offer to enter a PhD program at the University of Calgary. So, it's a thing, now. Starting in Fall 2016, I will be a PhD student in the Computational Media Design program. CMD is an absolutely amazing interdisciplinary program. From the About blurb:
At the University of Calgary, we formed the Computational Media Design Program to enable students to conduct research at the intersection of art, music, dance, drama, design and computer science.
The Computational Media Design (CMD) graduate program is composed of the Faculty of Science: Department of Computer Science, the Faculty of Environmental Design and the Faculty of Arts: School of Creative and Performing Arts and Department of Art. Students can earn graduate degrees, both Master of Science and PhD. The research-based graduate degrees explore the relationships between and among art, design, science and technology.
