Psound : An experiment in a new interaction technique using Paper, pencil and Eraser

Psound takes you on a blindfolded journey to explore sounds, more specifically musical notes. You start by making a mark on a paper, in response you hear a sound. Then you add another mark and after some time you hear a corresponding sound again. The sound generated so far plays in a loop. you keep adding to the soundloop with additional marks on the paper. Incase you dont like a particular addition you can erase it. Slowly with time you learn the correspondence between your action and the output and hopefully this will be an enjoyable experience.

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DoT : Drop on Top

Drop on Top(DoT) is an ongoing project developed by me under the guidance of Prof. Keyur Sorathia at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati. DoT is an interactive playful MultiTouch learning guide for children. As of now a game to teach students angles has been made and work on building a MultiTouch Table has begun.

A Prototype Image

Screenshots of the game

My role is of a researcher and developer for the project. The interface was designed by Tonmoy from MIT Pune. We eventually hope to conduct user testing with students.

Dhvani : A Multi-touch Modular Synthesizer

This project was coded using a C++ toolkit OpenFrameworks and TUIO C++ API. It has modules for playing prerecorded samples, synthesizing mathemetical function, Ring Modulator and Low Frequency Oscilltor. How this works is you keep object tagged with special markers on a MultiTouch table and an associated sound is produced. As you keep objects they get attached to other objects depending on their proximity and hence modify the generated sound. Rotating the objects alter sound parameters like frequency and amplitude.

Component Diagram for Dhvani :

Snapshot of Software Inteface :

A video of an early prototype demonstrating only the Wave Generator class. As the object is kept on the table surface, it is detected by the software and an associated visual is drawn on the laptop screen and sound is synthesized as well

All the development was done using a MultiTouch Table simulator software. I am building a multiTouch table as of now to fully test and use the software.

Graphic Designs

Here’s a collection of designs I made while freelancing for friends.

Cover of a Sponsorship Brochure

Promotional poster for a fortnightly lecture series on music that I helped organise

Promotional poster for a Celebrity Fan Club

A Witty Poster I made

Promotional poster for an Innovation challenge event

Promotional poster for an annual Techno-Cultural fest with the theme Bollywood

Motion Graphics

Physical Computing Assignment made for a friend. He got his grades, I had my share of fun.

 

Shootout

Shoutout is a Single Player 2D game developed in Processing. The aim of the game is to hit the ball by shooting the cannon 10 times before the ball hits the ground 3 times to advance to the next level. With each progressing level, the force of gravity increases.

Online Music Store

This website was developed as part of my Software Engineering course. Its an online music store where people can Buy Musical instruments online, book room for Jamming, engage in a discussion forum or view videos of the store’s owner’s performances.

I used Photoshop to design the website and HTML, CSS and PHP for coding.

Virtual Beatbox

Each Rectangle is a button, clicking on which you hear a sound sample which could be a ‘bass’,’beat’,’drum’ or ‘electronic’ sample. You can keep clicking the button until you stumble upon a beat of your choice. Repeat this for all the Pads and you can create a beat loop for yourself. The 16 pads represent one Bar of musical beats. You can click on the Play button anytime to Preview your work.

Such tools are used by Rappers, MCs and beatboxers to create soundloops for their song and to be used during live performances.

The Program has been written in Processing and uses the Beads library for audio.

Song Vizualization

First Idea :
This application was developed using Processing. The program reads a mp3 file and uses its binary data to set colors to the pixels of an image. Here are a few snapshots of some of the songs I applied the program to.

Remember, this is just a representation of the binary data and so the images dont depend on the pitch, genre, tempo of the song. They are as random as the bits in a file. The results, I feel are only valuable for their aesthetic value.

Snapshots
Song – Girl, you’ll be a woman soon by Urge Overkill

Song – Thrill is gone by BB King

Song – Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix

Second Idea:
I modified the same program a bit to get a different set of results. Now instead of having rectangles, the data from the mp3 file is used to draw ellipses with variable radii dependent on the Green and Blue colour of the data.

Here are some results :
Song – Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin

Song – Thrill is gone by BB King

Song – Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix

Spick-and-Span

Spick-and-Span is a 3D FPS style game developed in Python using Panda3d as the game engine. It was developed by me as a part of a Computer Games course that I took.
The problem statement given to us was – to make a game on the theme ‘Recycle’
My game is based in a futuristic world where humans have exhausted all the resources on earth. They have started invading other planets to steal/loot resources and ‘Recycle’ them on earth to fulfill their needs. The game is a training drill for the soldiers that they must complete before they are sent out to space. The training module runs for 4 minutes, wherein, in the first three minutes one has to steal/loot/collect all resources in the level before time runs out. In the last one minute the user has to answer many questions on Recycling. The cumulative scores in both the test help decide whether the Soldier has passed the test or not. Failure in any of the level is considered overall failure of the task.

Main Idea – The main guiding idea behind the game was that I think a game can only educate when it is entertaining in the first place. Having played the first three minutes like a game and then to lose because you could not answer a few questions will give you the incentive to learn about those questions.

Key Features Lighting, Background music, Event music, Collision Handling

Snapshots