The Birds
Inspiration
The inspiration came from waiting for the tram at the bottom of Elizabeth St. As I looked up at all the birds on the cables, they sat in set of patterns that lent itself to a musical sequence.
Concept
The concept of this sound toy is to use the four birds as notes in a musical sequence. Each bird represents a note in a bar of music. The two rows of birds allow for two types of sounds, one long and the other short.
Version 1.0
This version has two different states for each bird, off and on, clicking on the bird accesses these states. If the bird is in the on position the bird will play a note and trigger an animation as it plays the note. There is a moving ray of light in the sky to show the user where in the bar they are up to.
Ongoing
The soundtoy functions, as it should. I would like to animate the birds so when they were in the off position for more than 5 seconds they would fly away, and if the user clicked on an empty spot on the cable a bird would fly in and land. The ability to add many birds to each cable would mean the sound handling would need to be moved over to the beatnik xtra which allows up to 64 channels of audio, rather than the current limitation of 8 channels.
Extending the Concept
A webcam could be installed at Elizabeth St, which pointed at these cables, the timeline would work the same way and if a bird were on the cables a sound would be played. This would require the webcam xtra to compare each shot and check for image changes.