•• Inspirations ••

I was inspired by interactions with seemingly simple physical objects.

Think about using a pencil; writing is an experience that involves touch and movement, visual traces and sound. We would never think about a pencil as having sound; the sound is part of the inherent "pencil-ness" of the pencil. It corresponds perfectly to our motions. It is a joined consequence of the materials involved and the movements we make.

This led me to think about "Symptomatic" sound: sound that is a symptom of an action, usually a mechanical phenomenon. Symptomatic sound typically contains inherent variation: it may never sound exactly the same twice.

Sound in digital products is usually not like that; this "Introduced" sound is designed for communication purposes. Introduced sounds typically do not contain variation - they are more binary phenomena. Think of the mobile phone key sounds or the "click" introduced into digital cameras.

However, this is not always the case. An important example is the 'Sonic Finder' - a sound layer developed by Bill Gaver for the Apple Search application around 1989. The Sonic Finder used highly informative sound; for example, dragging a file created sound that varied according to the file size and the element over which it was being dragged.

THIS THESIS IS ABOUT THESE QUALITIES OF SOUND - ABOUT THE CONENCTION BETWEEN HANDS AND EARS.

Hands and ears work together with ease; think about tuning an old radio.

Hands and ears work together with pleasure; think about popping bubble-wrap.

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Audio-Tactile • Michal Rinott • Thesis Project • Interaction-Ivrea 2004	m.rinott@interaction-ivrea.it