CO_128_F2601

Workshop group work theme

Prototype a listening experience

“Create a situation where listening changes what we see, understand, or feel.”

Option 1: The Voice Across Time Machine

Group size

2–3 people

Brief

Create a small TouchDesigner sketch where a voice message feels like it is coming from another time: past, future, memory, archive, ghost, or delayed transmission.

Inputs

Use one of:

TouchDesigner ingredients

Constraints

The group can include some time effect:

Output

A 20–30 second visual/audio sketch.

Discussion question

What makes the voice feel like it belongs to another time?

This is probably the strongest exercise for your presentation.

Option 2: Sound as Evidence

Brief

Create a visual interface for “investigating” a sound. The audience should feel like they are looking for a hidden clue inside the audio.

This connects to The Conversation, Blow Out, hidden messages, spectrograms, backward LPs, and Aphex Twin.

Inputs

Use a short audio file with:

TouchDesigner ingredients

Challenge

Make the sound appear to reveal something:

Output

A fake forensic listening interface.

Discussion question

At what point does listening become interpretation, projection, or paranoia?

Option 3: The Hotline

Brief

Create a one-screen “hotline” experience. The viewer receives a voice, but cannot see the speaker. The interface should make the listener feel urgency, intimacy, or uncertainty.

This connects to The Guilty, Locke, The Call, Buried, phone booths, and voice-only drama.

Inputs

Use:

TouchDesigner ingredients

Constraints

No image of the speaker. Only the voice, interface, text, waveform, noise, or signal can communicate the situation.

Output

A short interactive call screen.

Discussion question

How much can we understand from a voice alone?

Option 4: Listening to the Room

Brief

Make the room itself visible through sound. Use the microphone to translate ambient noise, silence, speech, or movement into visuals.

This connects to John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Christina Kubisch, Janet Cardiff, and environmental listening.

Inputs

Live microphone only.

TouchDesigner ingredients

Constraints

The group cannot play a music file. They must use the actual room.

Output

A “listening instrument” for the workshop space.

Discussion question

What did the system make you notice about the room?

Option 5: Collective Voice / Collective System

Brief

Each group member contributes one small sound: a word, note, breath, clap, hum, or noise. The group combines these into one collective visual system.

This connects to Ryoji Ikeda’s distributed works, Moniker-style collective voice, Oliveros, choir logic, and dance/listening systems.

Inputs

Each participant records:

TouchDesigner ingredients

Constraints

No single voice should dominate. The system should feel collective.

Output

A visual choir, signal field, or multi-voice composition.

Discussion question

When do separate voices become one shared composition?

Option 6: The Listening Relay

Adaptation of the Animation Relay format, where participants pass projects around and each person adds a new layer. (digitalideation.github.io)

Brief

Each group starts a simple audio-reactive sketch. Every 10–12 minutes, they pass it to another group, who must add a new “listening mode.”

Round structure

Round 1: make sound visible Round 2: add memory / delay / feedback Round 3: add distortion / interference / hidden signal Round 4: add a final title or interaction

Output

Unexpected collective listening machines.

Discussion question

What changed when another group listened to your system differently?

This one is playful and good for energy.

Option 7: One-Minute Listening Film Festival

Adaptation of the “One-Minute Project” wrap-up challenge. (digitalideation.github.io)

Brief

Each group exports a 10–20 second clip answering this prompt:

What does listening look like?

Categories for voting

Sorting

Complexity Exercise Why
1 - Very easy One-Minute Listening Film Festival Mostly about making a short output from whatever they already built. Good as a closing exercise, not a main technical challenge.
2 - Easy Listening Scavenger Hunt Small isolated tasks: volume to brightness, sound to scale, silence to image. Good for beginners and fast experimentation.
3 - Easy / medium Listening to the Room Uses live microphone input and simple audio-reactive visuals. Conceptually strong, technically manageable.
4 - Medium The Hotline Adds narrative and interface thinking. Still simple technically, but requires more decisions about mood, text, voice, and timing.
5 - Medium Voice Across Time Machine Needs a clearer atmosphere: delay, degradation, memory, archive, ghosting. Technically not too hard, but conceptually richer.
6 - Medium / advanced Sound as Evidence More demanding because it needs to feel like investigation or decoding, not just audio-reactive visuals. Works best with spectrum, thresholds, hidden signals, text, or interaction.
7 - Advanced Collective Voice / Collective System Requires coordinating multiple inputs or recordings. More moving parts: timing, balance, layout, collective logic.
8 - Advanced / chaotic Listening Relay Technically flexible, but organizationally complex. Passing files between groups can create confusion unless the group already understands the basics.