蝉: The call of the cicada

One of the things I missed dearly from my childhood is the cicada calls in the summer. Just the sound of the calls become chimes to my ears, even the hottest days feel cooler because of my fond associations of it with summer relaxation. With a challenge to create the movement of an animal through physical computing, I immediately thought of the cicada timbal, the physiological feature responsible for the sound. 

 

In the last two years, I have been fascinated with the of touch and sound sensations stimulate us for relaxation and whether certain sensations can act as a countermeasure to fatigue, for example vision fatigue that more people experience from working with digital devices. I was curious how a multisensory experience representing the cicada sound, in particular, where the constant pitch is represented by haptic feedback would make users feel. In the process of creating this experience, I experimented with piazzo speakers, touch and distance sensors, sound libraries, and multiple speakers.

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The final installation consists of a unit of haptic sensation, sound, and light sequence produced by Arduino Uno, with piazzo speakers and haptic motor programmed at different pitches and intervals reacting to an approaching hand over a photoreceptor on the grass dome.  The whole installation takes a nature-inspired form referencing the forest, grass habitat in which cicada sounds would be prominent.

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