The project began with the concept of transforming people’s movement and behavior within a space into both music and visuals. The image at the top showcases some poster designs for the final device, but initially, I envisioned the project on a larger scale — for example, the kind of immersive experience you might find in the front of house area of a concert hall. In this version, the walls and the ambient sound would dynamically change depending on the number of visitors and their positioning within the space. The idea is to create an environment where the atmosphere is constantly evolving, with generative soundscapes and visuals responding to the movement of people. The musical inspiration behind this concept draws from the early elevator music experiments by Aphex Twin, which pioneered the idea of ambient, generative sound in public spaces.
To make the project more feasible within the limited time frame, we shifted from a large-scale architectural concept to a more compact product design approach. This transition took us from creating a UX/UI-driven installation to developing a “Pocket Sound Operator”. In this scaled-down version, the joystick simulates the flow of people, the buzzer generates the sound, and the LED matrix represents the changing walls of the space.
In this system, we have:
Joystick: Used to control both sound (through a buzzer) and movement in a simple game displayed on an LED matrix.
Buzzer: Produces sound based on joystick input.
LED Matrix: Displays a “snake game” where the snake’s position is controlled by the joystick.
The various posters created for the AAAA device spread across the constructed landscape, sparking curiosity and intrigue.
