Week 1

Alice and I (Becca) decided to team up for the self-directed programming project. So far we managed to come up with a tentative idea for our project. I wanted to do something that incorporates LED's and Alice wanted to do interactive by using sound, particularly with the audience speaking or yelling. I suggested we use the Arduino so we can incorporate both into the project. By this, I mean we're planning on using programmable RGB LED's and a mic sensor. 

We ended up briefly discussing a few ideas that we ended up scrapping such as:
- a heartbeat that lights up when sound is introduced (ex, it is made of LEDS and it beats faster the more sound there is)
- A scream bar (kind of like the scream canisters from Monsters Inc, where it fills up higher the more sound there is)
- something comedic (this line of thinking didn't really go anywhere)

An artist we found inspiration from was Jie Qi, particularly her work Dandelion Painting. It's an interactive piece that creates dandelions using LED's and allows you to blow on the seeds to spread them out and create new dandelions.

We wanted to do something similar in terms of the circuitry. Our current (tentative) idea is making a cityscape where the windows light up the more sound there is and stars in the background which become brighter the less sound there is. To simplify, if there is a lot of sound, the city windows are bright and the stars are dull but if it is silent, the windows are dull and the stars are bright. We haven't worked out the exact message we want this to send, but the first thought that came to mind was a commentary on light pollution. (This isn't where our brainstorming started though).

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