“But man has not always been dominated by vision.” (Pallasmaa and Holl, 2005) This statement confirms that not just looking at pretty designs, eg. Houses matters, the smell, the touch, the earing counts a lot. Just in the same book Pallasmaa and Holl say “In fact, a primordial dominance of hearing has only gradually been replaced by that of vision.” Clarifying that if there is any way of making the hearing better than vision we would be reviving the past. “The invention of a telescope gave the astronomers an opportunity to understand the universe. Galileo confirmed that it truly made distant objects appear closer.”(Hardy, 1998) The similarity between the Sound Hoover and the telescope is that both aim to make distant subjects appear closer. “Galileo’s discoveries demonstrated the value of using new instruments to extend human knowledge of the natural world through scientific observation, rather than attempting to deduce the truth from arbitrary assumptions, or by logical arguments.”(Hardy, 1998) It is often misunderstood what we ear when people speak to us, and in certain occasions deducing information might not be the reliably thing to do. The aim of the sound hoover is when directed to a certain direction whatever sound is heard from there can be clear and loud enough for our perception. Through the illustrations of the telescope on this page it is clear that it can be extended allowing to have a closer look of a subject, so the same would happen with the sound hoover, the longer and more cone shaped it is the better the sound heard by us. Architects have been bring the silence through the buildings that has been lost due to the development of the world, so it is a must for an architect to bring the perception, clarity when there is no quietness. (4)(5) After understanding how active the Parkside Building is, and how difficult it can be to clearly hear people within the busy spaces, we decided to create a product that could concentrate on one particular sound. All group members agreed that during some lectures and presentations it can be hard to hear, so we developed the Sound Hoover. This product allows users to achieve a sensory experience; focusing in on a particular sound which is something that the human ear does not allow you to do easily.
Today I spent some time researching spaces within the Parkside Building. I wanted to focus on the areas where our product would be most useful.
After recieving our brief we decided which building to use, Parkside. We then began by brainstorming ideas on a piece of paper relating to the building. We weren't yet sure which sense we were focussing on so our ideas varied from changing the perspective of height and direction of view, to altering the way in which we hear things and the direction they come from. After some debate we decided to focus on hearing as we agreed it can be difficult to hear lecturers at times. We then started to develop the 'self-awareness backpack' which has now been developed into the Sound Hoover.
The sense we have aimed to alter, amplify or, rather, just use to create the effect of our device, The Sound Hoover, is hearing. We do not aim to change the way the one using the device hears, but change what he/she hears.
Hearing, the auditory perception, is the ability of perceiving sound by detecting the vibrations of sound waves, which most humans posses and achieve using the hearing organ- ear. For humans, hearing is a mechanosensation, because we primarily hear the mechanical sound waves, the movement of molecules in the matter surrounding the ear. The journey of a sound begins as something in the surrounding world of the hearer induces, emits vibrations of a sonic or audio frequency (that is in a case of humans: humans can hear sonic, audio frequencies of between 20Hz and 20,000Hz, that is, the vibrations of a sound humans can hear complete between 20 and 20,000 cycles in a second). These vibrations then travel trough the surrounding matter, be it in a gas, liquid or solid state, until it reaches the flaps of the ear which funnel the vibration into the outer ear canal. The sound travels trough it until it hits the eardrum at the end of the canal and makes it vibrate. This moves the ossicles, which are the tree smallest bones in a human body and are connected to the eardrum. The ossicles pass on the vibrations to the oval window, which is a thin layer of tissue at the entrance if the inner ear. This movement sets of small waves in the fluid inside the spiral shaped cochlea, which is a part of the inner ears labyrinth like bony structure and is covered in sensory hairs which translate these mechanical vibrations to electrical nerve impulses. Those travel trough the cochlear nerve to the brain, where the sound is processed in the temporal lobe. Humans having two ears results in the ability of locating the direction from which the sound travels. Comparing how loud, intensive the sound is in each ear and which ear it reaches first, the brain is able to determine the direction of the sounds emitter. Number of people with blindness have developed their hearing to a level where they can locate themselves and objects surrounding them in a space, as well as build the model of the surrounding space in their head, by creating clicks or a similar sound, which bounces back at them. Today we were assigned our groups and started looking at how people travel through a space. We started by drawing around people of different height and built; to understand how a space enables people to move. We then generated the average height of a person by measuring all members in our section. Calculating walking strides also allowed us to see how much room people need to walk depending on their height and foot size.
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