The final project of ‘Introduction to Social Digital’ was to design a tool to help people reconnect with nature which makes use of and is inspired by found objects. A similar brief to the product design mood board from the last project however this time it was much more in depth, requiring more research and a more realised outcome.

Having the choice to continue with the product from the mood board or start afresh, I chose the latter as I felt I couldn’t progress with my last idea. Instead, I wanted to go in a completely different direction and focus on a different audience and purpose. My initial ideas were themed around encouraging exploration of the natural world, introducing nature into the urban environment or promoting sustainable living.

Part of the project was to theme the tool around found objects and luckily for myself, I  was able to find a range of objects and materials ranging from driftwood and waste plastic to light bulbs and the most exciting find, a very broken violin from my old school’s music department. This immediately took my ideas in a musical direction as it played to my interests of playing instruments and listening to music. I started to come up with various ideas for musical experiences and products I could incorporate my found objects into.

Before getting too far ahead of myself I decided to research existing music design, focusing on anything which incorporates nature into music or vice versa. I looked into musical instruments and installations from stone based MIDI keyboards to huge wind chimes and even a music player that moves strands of barley as if they were blowing in the wind. I was most taken by a couple of designs however. One was an installation of electric guitars in an aviary, which created a soundscape by playing the sounds of the birds landing on the instruments and pecking at the strings. The other was a range of instruments called Aeolian Harps, which produce sound from the wind passing perpendicular to the strings creating a vortex and causing them to vibrate.

I also looked into how instruments such as violins produce sound and how their structure affects the tone and pitch of the instrument. I already had a slight amount of knowledge but it was interesting to discover the purpose of many components such as the shape of body, which controls the natural tone of the instrument. The most important notes I took from the anatomy of violins were that the thickness and length of the strings affect the pitch of the instrument and the internal sound post carries vibrations from the top to the bottom of the instrument making it louder.

I decided I wanted to do something related to these Aeolian harps and create my own installation or sound based experience to encourage people to go outside and discover the natural world.