Medium: headsets with microphones, custom-made data gloves, sunglasses with opaque lenses, a real-time sound manipulating system with a micro-controller and Max/MSP, and 30,000 digital images projected on the wall
Miscommunication (v2.0D) explores the difficulty of verbal communication between two people from different linguistic backgrounds. The piece manipulates the voices of two participants who face each other. The voices are fed into the
computer, duplicated, and altered based on the participants’ hand movements. In the headphones,
the participants hear their manipulated voices, and as they attempt to communicate with hand gestures, more misconception and confusion arise. Use of the data gloves allows each participant to directly experience the extreme chaos of incomplete verbal communication.
By exploring the connection between movement and sound, meaning and perception, this piece asks people what the alternative ways of communication can be for all of us in the future.
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As participants speak into the microphone
while altering the sound with the data-gloves, they can hear their multiple-layered
voices manipulated by the reaction of
sensors in the gloves. When they hear their duplicated voices though this
device, they may feel the confusion of many sounds in the space.
Like a person who is calculating a math problem in one’s head,
friends shouting random numbers can create a distraction from the task at hand. Similarly, Miscommunication, which makes altered
multiple sound layers, offers participants an indirect chance to think about the importance of understanding others.
Max patcher screenshot
front view installation space / Max interface / data glove
(c) copyright 1996-2006 Byeong Sam Jeon. All rights reserved.
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