Introduction
Hello everyone, My name is Michel Robert. I’m a Computer Science undergraduate with a minor in Math. This is my final semester in my degree! I decided to take this class because I heard it was fun! Also I was interested in design and am interested to learn how computing is used to create art and other objects.
I’ve played the violin for about 15 years, and so i was looking for design projects that had to do with music. I had a hard time finding much but I found this project about acoustic reflectors which I found pretty interesting. The project was on retroreflection of sound where sound is reflected back to the the source regardless where the source is. They designed corner cube retroreflectors using right-angled corners to reflect the sound. This is particularly useful for keeping sound where you want it. It can be useful in musical practice rooms so you can hear yourself well and also in open areas using separators to keep sound from bleeding into unwanted areas. They used computational design as well as parametric modeling to design their reflectors to design the reflectors. The video on the sound wave simulations is pretty cool seeing how they were able to use different sound reflection designs in different scenarios.
Very fascinating, I love music and I love a great sound system along with the space it’s being reflected into. I can completely see how sound design in all forms will need the use of computational fabrication practices. Using math to finalize the details in replicating beautiful sounds. I can’t think of any other way of doing this so precisely other than the use of computers.
Hello Michel, congrats on finishing up your degree. I think its really cool we can combine computational design with a lot of things. I remember watching videos and stuff about using it to design architecture, but to use to help design musical instruments is really amazing.
Hi Michel,
This project is very interesting. I know so little about music but have always been fascinated by how and why performance spaces are shaped the way
they are. (Sorry I bumped my key board mid sentence). If you consider creating more musically inspired computational fabrication I am sure the results would be beautiful given music’s mathematical under pinnings.
Hey Michel, good post.
Using computers to design a layout to best reflect sound is a really cool concept and it provides a really cool and satisfying result at the end. Its really neat to see all of the different places you can use computers to enhance a project, but this is one of the most unique ones I’ve seen so far.