GO HARD OR GO HOME
This week has been one rollercoaster of emotions and truly emphasises that masters is nothing like your degree.
Being that i have never done any form of programming, i spent the some time each day practicing and learning as much as i could about processing. By the end of the week, i was happy and felt confident in my programming skills. Imagine my shock when on Monday, i was made to understand that i was still miles behind. Felt somewhat demotivated but i have come to the understanding that i have to keep pushing through the disappointments to get to where i need to be on this course.
We also had a wake up call this week on how little time we had on completing our first project on the aulos. Getting adjusted to the independent learning was clearly difficult for our group, so much that one of our valuable members changed courses due to the demands of the course. But we had no time to waste as we had less than 3 weeks to produce a working prototype and with this, we all sprung into action. We were able to actually program some switches to produce sounds using the pressure sensors.
With help from Carl, we have definitely gained more of an understanding of the programming aspect of the project and have been able to work as a team to plan our week to productively use the time we have left to accomplish our goal. The image above is just an idea for mounting the switches so they can be pressed. Simple but still bouncing ideas around.
We worked with Debbie this week and as usual, we are thrown into thinking on our feet and working as a team. The above image is a way of testing out an idea on the public in a way that exposes aspects that need to be worked on or simplified or just to show the user experience of your idea. For this task, we attempted to take someone through the steps of downloading and using “instagram”. From unlocking the phone to downloading the app, to using the app, we had to put ourselves in the position of someone using the app for the first time and imagining the steps they would have to take in using the app. This task allowed us to understand the importance of customer experience in any idea you think up. You have to be able to make your ideas/products easy to use and understand and the steps simple and straightforward.
We were introduced to the smart board which allows you to play around with effects and editing in some interesting ways. The smart board along with the steps we learnt for testing out customer experience using a product would come in handy in our project, when it comes to having to make a video, explaining the processes we followed in the production and explaining how it works.
UNI AT THE MUSEUM
As we all know, your studies extends beyond the walls of the university establishments. For us, our studies lead us to the museum where we intended to get a more in depth understanding of the aulos and the general history of greeks musical instruments.
We learnt that aulos were often made out of bones which i didnt know before this visit. They were always played through a reed and often in pairs as shown in the image above. Also found that the lengths of the aulos and the spacings in the holes on them were very intentional in altering the sound produced by the instrument. We were unfortunately unable to get a hold of a curator to help give us some more information on the instrument but was definitely worth the visit to learn about the different designs of musical instruments at these ancient times. This worked as a stimulus to inspire us in our designs for the project.
The above instruments where some examples of some ancient greek wind instruments. The big curved instrument on the right is a roman trumpet often used for battle calls and also played with reeds similar to what we were shown by peter last week.
This must mean that the reed we ere shown might have also been used for an instrument of similar size. Only an assumption due to the size of the reed but we had no one to confirm my hypothesis but seems like a good educated guess.
We got to see some other instruments from ancient roman and Egyptian times as shown above. From exploring the museum, the Egyptians seemed more interested in string instruments in comparison to the romans who were more diverse in string and wind instruments. The jars seemed to be used as means of passing down instructions through drawings. We have one showing a wind instrument being played with some sort of battle in the background. It seemed that while we have note pads, books and news papers for passing on informations or instructions, big jars where used for a similar purpose in a more elaborate and artistic way.
This week was a very interesting and productive week for me. Started of with a few worries, wondering if i would be able to keep up with the work load and learn as quickly as i need to but the lecturers have equally stepped up in putting me at ease. Its good to know that i have a good support system who are more than willing to help with struggles and as much as they want us to struggle, they are always there as long as we all keep pushing ourselves and keep practicing.
Ehijie Egualeonan 