Wearable Devices
The Sound of Slience
In short
The Effect of Human Noise on Birds
Category
Personal Project
Tag
Wearable Design & Video Art
Completed
September 10, 2022
The form of the sound unintentionally hurts the innocent. Although it is inconscient, the damage is done. Compared with the hustle and bustle, quietness seems so vague. This is nature, this is hope. But beyond nature, beyond hope. Lasting for a long time, doomed to later decline.
With the increase of urbanization level, birds that have lived in high-frequency noise environment are aging faster over time.
In the paper Investigating the Acoustic Properties of Materials with Tuning Forks, Z. Laughlin, F. Naumann and MA Miodownik pointed out that brass and steel work better. So I chose brass for the consideration of weight.
I designed the wearable device to wear on the arm, based on the survey of people's actions to animals in zoos indicates that people often tap, slap and kick with their arms and legs to interfere with animals, and the most frequent action is performed by arms.
The wearable device is designed according to the inner skeleton which is based on the movement and shape of the bird's wings.
In order to give the arm better stretchability and flexibility, and thus produce the high frequency sound, my final choice is to fix the arm with leather, and use brass chain to increase the flexibility and the range of brass tube.
In the tests of brass plates, solid brass tubes and hollow brass tubes, we found that the sound generated between brass plates was not as loud as the sound between brass tubes. As for the solid and hollow brass tubes of different thicknesses, we found that two hollow brass tubes at a thickness of 5mm can produce more harsh sound and tone tail.
In light of the darkened feathers on aged bird, we made a color-fading effect on brass tubes to strengthen the visual effect. In the local details, the light color leather over hand with similar shade difference and 8mm brass ring that can withstand the weight of brass tube were selected.
The sound itself is invisible, but people's unconscious agitation creates the aging of birds and becomes a tangible sword. The work shows that people can gradually understand the impact on birds during the interaction with the installation, so as to raise their awareness and reduce the occurrence of aging of birds.
