Project Background
Background:
How do you make a sound music suit that allows the wearer to manipulate any device (a sound generator module, a video camera, lights, cameras, etc.) using sensors attached to the suit?
The series of pages will show you one group of artists' answer.
In August 2012, Bobby Bray, Heather Brosche, and Randy Chiurazzi set out to create the answer...
Welcome to the sound suit development process blog.
It all started when Heather was nice enough to lend her clothing design and seamstress skills to the creation of a new and improved sound suit. Bobby has considerable skills as a musician and the use of electronics to create sound so when he expressed an interest I knew I would need to develop a way of capturing a wide array of ideas and an organizational system that would keep the team on track.
I will begin with a condensed version of how I arrived at a 'sound suit design system':
You will find the summaries of each of my design sessions with the team. The design outline we used is repeated with key changes highlighted in green.
A brief history of the sound-suit-design-system (a.k.a. how I corralled ideazilla).
- Ideas begin to flow
Soon after I commit to the project it becomes clear that I will get lost in the myriad ideas that are coming from the team.
A daunting realization occurs: 'once I list the ideas, in what order should they be executed?'
How do I keep the costs down while taking full advantage of the team's considerable concepts and ideas? How do we tackle the idea monster---"Ideazilla!!!!"
'Well, why don't I organized them by person (i.e. one half of the summary showing Bobby's contributions, and the other Heather's? 2 people, 2 sections...hmmmmm
'
An outline form is born:
- I settled on the evloving-outline form you see thoughout the blog As you can see, it is more of a list with pleas for help interspersed! You will see that in the second summary I started grouping ideas. ' But', I self-queried, 'what categories, and why categories?'( categoryzilla might grow out of control as well) My cortex threw another balloon that said, 'create categories that are aspects of the suit, then list what would be an optimal design for that aspect, then see if the idea-gobs everyone is generating will loosen into bite size wisdom chips. (see the second summary for details).
An Idea beast is tamed:
And so far, that has been the secret weapon for corralling ideazilla, conceptura, categorthra, etcetera. and presenting them to Bobby and Heather in a way that doesn't make them want to crunch them into a ball and throw them at me; lock me in an asylum until I untie the categorecxicon; tell me they got me a gig with the new suit at an arena, then lock me onstage as Justin Bieber takes it. Come on guys...you wouldn't do that...would you?
Thanks for your interest,
Randy
Table of contents:
Background: What started it all?
What will we do at the first meeting?
How will we start everything?
How will the electronics begin to take shape?
How will the sound get from the suit to the computer?
How do you begin to fabricate Les Suit?
How do you organize and communicate a dizzying array of great ideas?
Ahh, could we see a sketch the electroniques?
How do you allow for idea expansion without getting lost in the idea ocean?
How do you modify the idea list so members of the team know which ideas to spend time on?
Electronics further defined