Dancing Feathers
by your voice
There are hundreds of feathers that can fly. Sometimes, we might not want to communicate with people. But we all need to share the emotional parts of our lives. Imagine thousands of feathers which build a small room by surrounding you. These feathers respond to your movements and the sounds you make.
Comfort
Human gestures or tones of voice can present the bearer's emotion. So, the feathers' movements are manipulated as responses depending on the gestures or tones the human uses. This feather room reacts to your mood and may give you the feeling of being warmly comforted as you enter into conversation with the dancing feathers.
Joyful
The feathers move faster or slower depending on the speed of human movements and sounds. The feathers' responses allow you to try experimenting with different inputs. It's natural to collaborate with the feathers, almost like you're playing music together, and if the feather responds appropriately, you may feel as if you're dancing a waltz with the feather space.
Being in BALANCE
What about trying to find a balance? The louder your movements or voice, the quieter the feather space becomes. If you are feeling your depression in silence, the feathers may be busy trying to lift your mood. How you communicate with the feathers is up to you. What feather room do you want to be in? Pull the hidden conversation out!! What kind of conversation/ interaction do you want to be part of? Snap, clap, whistle… It can also respond to the sound of these. When you snap your fingers, the feathers can seem to move to the tap dance beat. If you clap, the feathers get excited, and their rotation speeds up; they fly fluttering through the air. Whistle, too, to see what they will do.
In this project, I was able to make a synchronized structure which was activated by microphone. When we made a sound, the feathers reacted by rotating. When the sound stopped, the feathers stopped moving, but when the sound continued, the feathers' movement accelerated.
I believe this project has further potential, and the initial idea can be built upon. If the technology allows, we can fine tune our feather instrument; utilizing the possibilities of AI, inputs could include the emotion of the voice, pitch and meaning of the words - alongside the subtleties of gesture and movement. That way, we would be able to more intricately control the feathers' responses with variations in rotational speed and angle, thereby creating a spectrum of moods and conversation.
