Art & Technology - Game Controller

I really enjoyed the game controller project we did.  It came easier for me to create more than the game, perhaps because of our previous experience with Makey Makey.  I did like how the game controller and game brought our Scratch, sound, programming, animated gif and Makey Makey projects all together to work cohesively as one thing.  For my controller, I chose to create a spherical ball reminiscent of the crystal ball that the Goblin King uses throughout the Labyrinth movie, and the one that Sarah is trapped in during the ballroom scene.  I used an old clear plastic ornament, and attached metal clips to it as the "buttons." Inside, I used a phone wire with 4 small wires inside to attach to the Makey Makey for my four controls in the game - up, right, left and the space bar.  I wanted to be able to use the controller in one hand (my second hand use in the video is only to steady it).  I painted it white to conceal the wires inside as well. 

The game creation itself came together in the end, even though it was more simple than I originally intended, and it was interesting to play it with the controller because it added an element of difficulty.  I made the controller to fit my hand too, so it also has an element of customization and uniqueness to it that I wasn't expecting for some reason.  It definitely adds to the artistic quality of the game, to have a one of a kind controller. 

As art teacher, I look forward to incorporating multiple artistic techniques into single projects.  I feel like this adds an element of dynamic learning that helps students realize their strengths and overcome their challenges. Working on large scale projects like this collaboratively would also be a great way to teach about teamwork and getting along with peers.  Although I think technology can be combined with traditional art making practices, projects like these completely redefine the way we can teach in an art classroom.  It truly combines many disciplines, and is aligned with STEAM curriculum.  I look forward to using new media in my classroom in the future.  

Art & Technology - Video Game Song "As the World Falls Down" by David Bowie

For this project, I made a soundtrack to my soon-to-be created video game "As the World Falls Down," which is inspired by the scene in the movie Labyrinth when the main character, Sarah, gets caught inside a crystal bubble ballroom world created by her nemesis, the Goblin King, as a way to stop her from completing her mission through the Labyrinth.  The music is based on the song by David Bowie, which was composed for the movie.  I used the sheet music from the song, along with sound bites created on Pulseboy.com.  I then looped the sounds and composed the song using Soundtrap.com.  On Soundtrap, I was able to slow down, speed up and piece together each separate part, to create a 2 minute and 26 second musical number. 

Using these technologies to create a soundtrack was easy and fun to do.  Programs like Pulseboy and Soundtrap are a great way to augment sound making and recording. I am not a musician, but I was able to use my limited musical knowledge to translate and modify the song into a semi-original piece.  I think that this type of composing would be beneficial in a classroom setting, especially among those who have never written a song before.  It was kind of like taking building blocks and placing them one at a time to form one larger thing, which was way less intimidating than actually setting out to write a full song all at once.  Being able to copy a tune also allowed me to learn more about music writing and composition, which I could use in the future to create a more original song.  Although I don't think copying is always the best thing to do, I feel that sometimes it can help teach how things are created by breaking it up into parts and reassembling it. 

Art & Technology - Thoughts on 8 Bit Video Game Audio, Then and Now

I grew up in the 80's and played video games (or watched my older brother play them) as far back as I can remember. Although I don't always remember every nuance of graphics or gameplay, the songs that accompanied the games I played are always recognizable and ingrained on my memory.  Back in the 80's, the limits of technology (or at the time, they were seen as advances), added a certain aesthetic to the music of video games that puts it unmistakably in the decade of decadence, where everything felt like it was from the future or "in the now."  That aesthetic translated into very memorable music, and those tunes are ones I hum even to this day.  Super Mario Brothers, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Paperboy, among others, were all part of my daily routine.  The music was simple, yet usually held a driving beat that kept me motivated to play the games over and over and over, speeding up when the time was running out, getting more mysterious as I entered an underground level, or illustrating that my foe was from a different country than the one before. 

All of the songs were used to augment my experience with playing the games, make them stick in my memory and motivate me to play them multiple times.   The one similar aspect of all of the soundtracks was the use of looping to create short bursts of sounds into longer melodies.  Not only did this mimic how popular music was made at the time, it also created auditory cues for how I experienced  the gameplay.  For example, the short victory tune at the end of a Mario level, when he jumps on the flag and enters the castle.  This always gave me an almost Pavlovian response of relief and joy, as if I had been holding my breath while playing and could now relax. Or when the timer came to less than 100 seconds, the music speeds up to warn the player that they need to go faster.  Gameplay doesn't speed up, but the automatic response is to run and jump over obstacles and enemies much faster.

"It would appear, then, that rather than being the consequence of the limited memory available on the systems, loops were, at least in part, an aesthetic that grew as the games became more popular and more complex." (Collins, 2007)

Nowadays, students are still playing the "retro" games of the 80's and experiencing it as a sort of nostalgic aesthetic, rather than a futuristic or current one.  Even though music soundtracks on games have greatly surpassed the level they once were, there is still a fondness for the way things used to be.  In that, we can teach students that often when technology becomes "obsolete", it can be used in a new way or how we can use it to modify or redefine what we already do, rather than lost and forgotten.  Appreciation of older technology can create that greater respect for the way things are now.

Reference

Collins, K. (2007). In the Loop: Creativity and Constraint in 8-bit Video Game Audio. Cambridge University Press.

Art & Technology - Fart Machine (Fun AND Educational!)

After creating our fart sounds, I decided to augment our project into a fart machine.  To keep things semi-appropriate, I chose to create a line of "poop emoji" rubber ducks that each represented one of the sounds we made.  To create the soundtrack, I loaded the sounds into Scratch (scratch.mit.edu), and hooked up the Makey Makey to the computer and set each corresponding computer key to each of one of the sounds.  For example, the space bar is hooked to the "FartSound.wav."  When the space bar (or the Makey Makey wire) is clicked, the corresponding sound plays from the computer.  Since the ducks are rubber, I need to attach a metal piece to them to complete the circuit, since rubber does not conduct electricity.  I used brads that were poked into the side of the ducks and stuck out the bottom, where the Makey Makey wires were hooked.  The result was the perfect little fart machine.  

Although my kids and I had a lot of fun making this, I felt it really augmented our sound making learning experience.  We got to see how the Makey Makey works, and create a "machine" that allowed us to display our sounds combined with an interesting visual.  This really turns visual art making into an interdisciplinary experience, that includes science, technology, engineering and performance art, redefining what we might normally see as a visual art assignment.  As stated in my previous post, I felt that the theme of the project may not be appropriate for some school environments, but the kids loved it and I got to include some of their visual culture (the poop emoji) as well, which made the project interesting for them while still learning about the technology.

The video below shows my son playing the Fart Machine, then a b-roll with the sound effects dubbed over (made in iMovie)...

Art & Technology - Sound Effects

For my second project, we were asked to create 8 sound effects, using a combination of samples, which I recorded on my iPhone 7, and also sounds created on the website bfxr.net.  For all of my projects as I learn to become an art educator, I like to get my children involved as much as possible. They are 7 and 4, so their tastes and sense of humor are of the potty variety.  Although these particular sounds and subsequent "instrument" I created (see it here) are not necessarily school appropriate, I did find the creation of sound effects to be highly educational.  We were faced with the challenge of trying to recreate a particular sound without actually using the sound itself (in one case we did).  We had to implement some creativity in order to get a variety of different noises, which had that distinguishable quality of the fart noise.  

In a classroom, I would love to create a project that involved creating sounds that are either original noises or mimic existing sounds without actually using the sound itself.  This presents both a challenge to creativity and an attention to nuance and detail.  It also teaches students that we can use our sense of hearing to evoke feeling or emotion, such as humor. 

Using bfxr.net was very simple and straightforward.  It provided a variety of controls to change the qualities of the sounds, and was easy enough for me to figure out immediately, without having any prior sound creation experience.  I think this would be a valuable tool to use in the classroom when creating sound effects, and would augment or even modify the way sounds are captured as samples.  It gives a nice introduction to the history of video game sound in particular, while teaching about the variety of ways sound can be made and recorded.  Samples are also a great way to augment sound making.  As demonstrated with my "Fart Sounds" below, you can use a variety of items and materials to create sounds that don't necessarily represent what they actually are.  This project was a lot of fun for me, and for my kids as well!

Art & Technology - Thoughts on The Effects of Sound on Video Game Enjoyment

When I think of playing video games, many different images come to mind.  Not just the ones I see on the screen, but also the technology and the active process of playing.  One thing I don't readily think of is sound.  However, the aspect of sound with video games is just as, if not more, important than the use of our eyes.  Indeed, when I hear a music tune or sound effect from Super Mario or Sonic The Hedgehog, it is immediately recognizable.  The effects of sound do not only allow us to enjoy games, but also can help us connect to them emotionally, provide us with motivation (faster music helps us play more efficiently, for example) and keep us immersed in the environment of the game we are playing, in order to get more enjoyment. Background music specifically "...is used to communicate aspect of the narrative, convey emotion, and enrich the experience of the player (Fu & Zhang, 2015)."

With the further development of technology, including high definition graphics and realistic, surround sound, video games "positively affect social richness, or the extent to which a medium is perceived as socially intimate and immediate, by more accurately communicating the visual and verbal features of other social beings (Skalski and Whitbred, 2010, p. 70-71)."  In other words, the level of immersion into the video game increases when visuals are combined with music and sound, and in turn, increases enjoyment of the game. 

Although music has a great effect on this enjoyment, I think that more subtle sounds can also have an effect on immersion. My husband was recently playing a Virtual Reality demo of "The Last Guardian."  It is an action adventure game, in which players control a boy who befriends a giant half-bird-half-mammal creature, Trico.  Trico follows you around, and helps you through your quests.  At one point while playing, my husband lost sight of Trico.  Suddenly, he "felt" his presence next to him, and when he turned, Trico was sitting there.  Although he isn't sure why he felt that way, I suspect that there was some low frequency sound that alerted him to Trico's arrival.  Whether it was meant to represent his breathing, or a shift in the air caused by his mass, it was something indeterminate that had a great effect on how realistic the game was, and in turn, how immersed my husband became in playing.

I think that with all art, some sort of transportation to an idea or a feeling or a world is important to convey.  When teaching visual art, we often forget that we use all 5 of our senses when experiencing our world around us, and sound can be an effective tool to convey messages too.  Anything from music to sound effects to subtle shifts in bass or frequency, sound can evoke feeling and presence too.  This is important to teach as well, that we must not only critically investigate visual forms of representation, but evaluate all forms of representation that are used to change or redefine our worlds.

References:

Skalski, P. and Whitbred, R. (2010) Image versus Sound: A Comparison of Formal Feature Effects on Presence and Video Game Enjoyment. Cleveland State University. P. 67-82.

Zhang J, Fu X (2015) The Influence of Background Music of Video Games on Immersion. J Psychol Psychother 5:191. doi:10.4172/2161-0487.1000191