Today my friend Mimi (Magnhild Fossum) called, all excited after reading about my project. She’s a dancer and choreographer who I’ve sort of had in the back of my mind in regard to the performance part of this project. As I’m still practising using the headset I didn’t want to excite her too much. Still, it seems like my movement triggers the various cognitive aspects of the Emotive application, and this can probably be used to create synchronised motion and sound events in a performance. We definitely will be looking at doing a collaboration when the time comes.

I have been a bit under the weather the last couple of days so when someone kept buzzing my door, and I was not expecting anyone, I did not bother to get up. I figured it was someone trying to sell me something I didn’t want. Only after incessant buzzing did I finally comply. It turned out to be UPS with a package for me! It was the headset. As it turned out, the guy had tried my door yesterday too. I had frankly not expected the package yet since typhoons in Asia kept creating delays and I had not received any shipping confirmation. Anyway, the headset was in the house and I was ready to try it on my application.
It is now a couple of hours later and I have of course encountered many issues. Firstly, my training application does not run as smoothly as I expected. Secondly, the amount of control I can have with the sounds is limited. This said, it is quite exiting just to be able to push the sound around with the force of your mind alone. With a little more training I think I might be able to at least have some fun, but I will probably not perform any musical feats of lasting impression. The main thing is still that audiences can have fun an try for themselves, which still seems to be within reach. The piece probably needs an assistant to help users put the headset on and keep the sensors moist with a saline solution.
All in all not to far from what I expected. I was impressed with the signal quality I got even through a full head of hair. I still have some issues with user profile handling and loading and saving user data. I hope to iron out these as soon as I have patched the problems with the training.

I’m beginning to hear back from manufacturers on the costs of building the conch. Prices are pretty much what I expected (approximately 100.000 NOK for the 3 editions), which means that building is out of the question without external funding. The good news is that most manufacturers will deliver the whole conch, in carbon fibre or plastic, all painted with a slick finish. All I have to do is slide my electronics in through the main hole and wire it up. I also heard back from Eminence (one of the speaker manufacturers I contacted) about providing me with some free samples of their speaker drivers for my prototype.

According to the Emotiv discussion forum all overdue shipments of the headset will ship tomorrow October 3rd. Exciting! This means that I’ll soon be able to test my application with the hardware. I have booked Atelier Nord’s audio/visual room for October 14th, hopefully I’ll have everything ready by then…

Finally got word back from product designer Ragnhild Haugum on prototyping possibilities. I called her a while back asking for input on how to build the actual sculpture. Options are casting from a mold, or machining it. I’m considering carbon fiber as my main material. She also suggested I spray paint the model with acrylic enamel car paint.
Next step is to get some input on pricing from possible suppliers of this technology:

http://www.eker.no

http://www.minoko.no

http://protolab.no

http://www.modellverkstedet.no

Today I finished programming the application. Once I get the headset I will probably make a few adjustments. The next phase now is to apply for funding the actual installation. I will make a few more 3d renderings of the conch and post them here as I go.

Had a meeting with artist Kenneth Langaas today. My former art teacher and friend Lars Pålgaard recommended him since I was looking to produce the conch as cheap as possible, perhaps even in China, and he gave me a few good connections I will follow up. He also gave me some valuable feedback regarding the project itself. Since I have been uncertain as to how quickly the avarage user can acquire sufficient skills to use the conch, I had originally planned to use it mainly in performances myself. Kenneth reminded me of the potential success in the project if the audiences could interact for themselves. Looking at me controlling the sound might be a somewhat dull experience, and requires the musical aspect to be an artistic experience in and of itself. I have now started programming a short training interface that can get the avarage user up to speed in less than a minute.

Today my brother told me about a similar project, from a few years back, that I ought to check out. The project, “Feelings” (2003) was an interesting affair. Composer Robert Wallin and artist and programmer Simen Svale Skogsrud had made a piece where the audience of a short video wore a simple EEG sensor while watching. The readings from the sensors were used to compose music using Wallins unique fractal formula. The audience could after the viewing ask to have their “personal soundtrack” burned to a CD.
“Feelings” (2003) [article in Norwegian]

Here is a video of the headset in action from Fora.tv. CEO Tan Le and her colleague demonstrate how quickly you can train your cognitive ations. Since I have done all my programming this far with an emulator, this footage is reassuring to see. I am looking forward to receiving the headset in the mail, though there seems to be some more delays due to a typhoon is South-East Asia.