Sonic Jacket
about the project
Project is dealing with contemporary life that became to be more and more nomadic. Therefore the goal of the project was to find some very specific and poetic need of a contemporary nomad and then to transmit this need into a wearable computing appliance.
The jacket is made to collect sounds from the environment through which one moves and then to play these sounds through an interaction with other people. Playing of sounds is taken as an abstract point in sharing of experience. Experience is, in this case, translated into sounds.
In terms of technical solution project is ranged as a high technology project because it uses a high-tech processing unit that is controlling the whole system, which is put on the jacket. The system consists of loudspeakers, microphones, sound amplifiers, sensors and 'gumstix' computer.
Keywords: nomadic, sound, experience, interaction, awareness, touch, environment, traveling, sharing.
The thing that I wanted to accomplish in this project is connected to my own duality when nomadic experience is concerned. From one side, professional part of my personality wants to go and experience life in the civilization. The noise that cities are producing, the sounds of traffic arteries, people speaking different languages, machines, buildings, industry. But from the other side, maybe more quiet part of my personality wants to experience peace and tranquility of the nature. That relaxing feeling that one has after a time spent in the nature. One of the main motivations in this project was to enable the wearer to really be able to feel difference of the places that he's been moving through. In this sense the jacket should capture all this distinctive moments and mark what is their real character. So at the end one should get different sound qualities of all the diverse places he visited.