Nanna and I did some research into color theory and the concept of an aura for our redial final project. I found this particular definition of what an 'aura' actually is to be very interesting:

'Everything in the Universe seems to be just a vibration. Every atom, every part of an atom, every electron, every elementary “particle”, even our thoughts and consciousness are just vibrations. Hence, we may define the Aura as a electro-photonic vibration response of an object to some external excitation.'

We also made some conclusions about the different auras we will be using to define the project and the color mapping that we will using to illustrate the auras on a map:

1) Positive/Energetic Aura: vitality, vigor, excitement. Lots of energy and stamina, creative, productive,adventurous,
courageous, outgoing social nature

2) Sexual/Powerful Aura: Loving, tender, sensual, passionate, affectionate, lifeforce

3) Inspiring Aura: awakening, intelligectual, action shared, mental alertness, analytical thought

4) Calm/Peaceful Aura: clarity and communication, cool, collected, serene

5) Nostalgic Aura: intuitive, psychic power of attunement with self, magical

6) Negative/Dangerous Aura: fear, anxiety, loss of control, nervousness

7) Sad/Unsatisfying Aura: lonliness, depression, despair, grief, feeling worth-less

8) Angry/Stressful Aura: obsessive, unforgiving, fatiqued, unresolved

9) Spiritual Aura: enlightenment and divine protection, wisdom, inner knowledge, spiritual mind, intuitive thinker

10) Fullfilling/Compelling Aura: comfortable, growth and balance, health, and most of all, something that leads to change

View colors

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View Wireframe

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Otherwise known as the Redial final project (and possibly the Mobile Apps final project)....

For a while, I have been interested in creating something where a mobile phone could control visual information in the real world. I worked on a project last semester using Max/MSP that sort of addressed these interests using the mysql object and live user-submitted photographs (although the actual performance of the project was compromised thanks to Tonic's unreliable internet connection- but that’s a different story). Upon taking the Redial class, I obviously became very interested in how the human voice could become a control mechanism and renewed my previous interest in speech recognition.

So far my final project in Redial I came up with an idea to combine all of this into one. I will be working on the project with Nanna Halinen and a few others (no firm commitments yet), and a special thanks has to go out to Jadie and Ben, who recently made me rethink the complexity of the idea (it’s always great to know people smarter then yourself..hehe). I was initially inspired by the concept that as we have become more inclined to communicate through digital means (email, text messaging, myspace and the like, etc.) we have perhaps become less likely to communicate through traditional means, such as face to face or through voice on the phone. Not that I believe that email or text messaging is a bad way to communicate, simply that it is interesting to see how information is translated differently in that format, specifically information that deals with memory and emotions. I touched on similar concepts in the first semester of ITP when I worked on the SMS Case project with Nanna and Alex Bisceglie. However, our goals were never fully realized due to a fried Bluetooth module (no comments on this please) and the perceived limitations of J2ME. I also think in retrospect that we were making the concept to complex. So here is my new thought:

There has been a lot of work and research done surrounding speech recognition and analysis in an attempt to glean some kind of emotional context automatically through analyzing pitch, tone, intonation and the actual spoken words. I have also seen a number of projects that allow bloggers to use voice to make comments on photographs they have taken (which is particularly interesting because, especially if you are in a rush or not the best text messager in the world, this seems to be a much easier way to describe an event you have witnessed or contextualize a memory and have it immediately posted). For this project, I want to create a interactive screen display of user-generated photographs that are location based, perhaps visualized on an actual map, perhaps not. Viewers would be able to submit photographs to the screen via an MMS message. Then they could call in and leave a comment about the photograph (either a description of the event they attended, a memory of that location, the reason they took the photograph..etc,). Each photograph will have a unique ID displayed on the screen. Other viewers can then call in, find out where the photo was taken, hear the recorded voice comment and leave a comment/memory of their own. Each comment will be put through some kind of speech analysis to determine its emotional context. That emotion will then be tagged to that location in the database.

Viewers can then download an application (from the web or from a Bluetooth location, i.e. my computer) that will assign a specific ring tone and visual graphic to a set of common emotional responses on their mobile phone. (the ring tones and graphics will initially be pre-determined but can be changed at any time through the application itself or on the website) Then when the person is out in Manhattan, they can send a text message with their location and receive a phone call that will alert them to the emotional context of the location they are in by playing a ring tone and displaying a graphic on their phone. If they choose to answer the call, they can listen to the comments left about the location, leave their own comments and choose to have the most recent photographs viewable on their phone. In addition, if they are in an 'unhappy' location, for instance, they can choose to 'find' a 'happier' location, and the application will alert them as to which direction to travel to find a specific emotion.

Much of this idea still needs to flushed out, but this is the general concept. More info will be available as we work on it.

Posted by Cat at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After numerous problems, mostly because of our database on dreamhost (and some late night syntax errors), Nanna and I managed to get our redial project working....somewhat.

When you call the asterisks number you can record a voice mail comment for an image that got sent to you through our blast network as long as you are calling from a number that you registered with freeformed. The voicemail comment is then inserted into our database, emailed to the freeformed server and then converted to an mp3 using lame. Then the lame file can be viewed online in a flash player we built in less then a week.

Since we are not opening up registration yet...unfortunately you can't test it.

This is what the profile might look like:

profile

Here is an example of the flash player which reads in an XML file written by PHP.

Flash Player

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For the redial midterm, Nanna and I are going to be working on an aspect of the new version of freeFormed.org called the BLAST network.

View Wireframe

View Flash User Example

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It seems that everyone's eyes lit up when Shawn annouced asterisks capability to record phone conversations and connect two people without either of them having to call eachother (outbound calling...FABULOUS..I'm just dying to get a call from social.itp.nyu.edu..no,really I am). In light of this 'excitement' I decided to try to make this work, call two people and have them connect to eachother and record the conversation. (no devious actions, just two phone numbers that are mine...I would never use this on poor unsuspecting people...hehe). I also got up and running with IAX soft phone and the gizmo project.

The result of my attempt, however, is so far unsuccessful, although I did successfully crash the entire asterisks dialplan for the redial class because of an incredibly stupid syntax error. (which Im sure Shawn was so pleased to fix at 3:00am....sorry!....had no idea I was capable of that). Needless to say before I dismantle the whole server I am going to bed to get some sleep. Update tomorrow when my brain starts functioning again. (these kind of things only happen to me)

Posted by Cat at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For this weeks assignment, I created a simple voicemail dialplan by converting audio files I recorded to .gsm files. I gave the caller two options. If they are members of freeformed.org they press one, if not they press two. If they press one they are able to leave a voicemail, if not they are greeted with a message telling them to go register for freeformed and call back. The one problem I had was I couldnt figure out how to get rid of the default voicemail greeting. Here is the dialplan.

Then, i reconfigured the voicemail.conf to send the voicemail messages to the email address phone@freeformed.org. I also renamed and reconfigured the popper currently working on freeformed to check this email address and put the files into a table in our database called phone. I was trying to first convert the .wav files to mp3 using ffmpeg but its not working yet.

Popper

Logic File

Posted by Cat at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am very exicted about the Redial class, mostly because I already have a couple of projects in mind. I am really interested in exploring the use of voice online (messages/commenting..etc.) and how such functionality can both supplement and change the space of social networks and media sharing. During our first class discussion I was actually quite surprised to hear many people in the class say that they did not like talking on the phone. Maybe I'm just an old fart, but I much prefer communicating with my friends in this way. Email is fine for work related issues or to invite large groups of people to an event and text messaging is fine for quick messages or when you simply can't make a phone call. But as a general rule, I prefer to hear the sound of people's voice. I could spend hours talking to my friends per day, and usually do if I'm not too busy. And I actually have a hard time understanding why people prefer not to communicate in this way. Emails and text messages are not personal and can often be misunderstood and are even sometimes inappropriate to communicate certain things. There are some people, either because its their preference or because I am not particularily close to them, that I do communicate with in this manner, but if it was up to me I wouldn't. One thing that I have always felt about most social networking sites is that they follow the model of attempting to (at times) be very personal while allowing for communication that is very impersonal. What happens if this changes with the inclusion of voice?

In other related news, I constructed my first asterisks configuration. Unfortunately, it didn't work because I forgot one important factor...unix line breaks. Apparently, when using TextPad, when you save you have to convert line breaks from PC to Unix. Oops.

Posted by Cat at 01:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After attending the first Redial class, which I might add promises to be very interesting and exciting, I decided to take a closer look at Snapvine.com. I had recently discovered the website (see an earlier post) on myspace because of their new feature which allows you to embed a voice recorder flash module on any web page that allows your 'friends', or really anyone, to leave you voice messages that anyone else can listen to. While the concept was interesting, I found the execution to be somewhat silly, given that there was no filtering system and no real context or reason why the voice messages should be left and played for a public audience (but the module is specifically made for myspace, which explains a lot). However, upon examining the site closer, I found that there were alot of 'traditional phone' related features. For instance, you can use the site for people to leave you private voicemails for free, you can schedule free wakeup calls, you can have pre-recorded messages sent out to people you know (think break-up messages and the like, this has the potential for incredible abuse) and, the most interesting feature, you can create and join voice forums to talk about anything you want either publically or with a private group of friends and family for free. You can also sign-up to hear podcasts from your phone. Not quite sure why one would want to do that, I suppose if you dont have an ipod it may be useful. But you have to wonder, if you dont have an ipod, how would you know about podcasts. Still its kind of interesting.

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