I thought more about my Digital Jungle idea. I’m not settled on it, but I am interested in seeing it through.
As a quick refreshener, this project aims to create a jungle of digital “animals”, which resemble the devices already around us. Each listens for its call sound, and emits a different call. These calls propagate until one animal dies out, and the chain is broken.
People will be able to contribute their own sounds as well. By whistling or yelling, users can trigger the device’s calls using their own voices and sounds, and enter into the jungle which we spend so many of our hours in. They can even become animals of their own, coming up with their own response when another animal emits their call.
I’ve been thinking about the engagement of this piece; I want people to participate and watch, so it cannot be a solely audience driven piece. The users should have input, yes, but each animal should also emit calls at different times randomly. It would also sound bad if two animals consistently lined up their calls so we have to schedule the “random calls” to avoid that, but that’s a harder problem without a common controller. Luckily, I’m coming up with a similar system for a different project, so I can reuse that prime-coding to prevent overlapping calls.
https://www.firstpalette.com/images/craft-mainpic/foldingpaperzooanimals-bear.jpg
I’m also not sure where the devices will “live” or what the animals will be. Visualized, I expected to have foamcore cutouts of various animals, but that defeats the “digital devices jungle” theme. Originally, we were going to use consumer electronics; Google Homes, microwave, toaster, kettle, etc., but I worry that they do not anthropomorphize well. Slapping googly eyes on them will help make them more animal-like, but even then the room will just have a bunch of toasters beeping at each other. The atmosphere must be set, and I’ll probably use a rainforest-y noise soundtrack to do that. It would be really cool to have techno-forest noise, but I doubt it exists.
Another thing is the scale. I want it room-wide, I want the atmosphere to encompass the room. Due to distance, that means the animals must be loud enough to transmit or sensitive enough to pick up a call from across the room. This power demand may be tough to overcome, since I can’t make a great amp for each animal. I’ll also choose some to make battery powered, so you can place them anywhere.
I’m definitely interested in the ambiance of the space, which is impacted by the speakers. The rainforest noises will set the jungle vibe, but the digital part is trickier. Using beeps for the speaker is easy and sounds electronic, but also somewhat jarring especially if they’re really loud. Making an electronic call is possible (sequence of tone() calls), but also tricker to detect and differentiate by other animals. Any failure in the chain of understanding means a call that won’t get a reaction, which makes the jungle feel like it only has one animal at a time.
Anyway, I’m excited to work on this. Lots of distributed pieces coordinating into an environment on their own, and participatory for the users too. Only question I have left for now is what bodies to put the animals into: organic or digital?