Dissertation Update
This week I started working on my dissertation again as well as working on my making part of things. I had a tough time figuring out where to start since it was a lot so I decided to start with my introduction and with deifniing terms and putting in examples first so I can keep organzing thigs and making sur emy explanations are clear. I also established my research pillars for the draft that changed from the RPO. To be honest, since I was still in a space where I did not have a lot of my work done, I was pretty confused as to what to write for the rest of the dissertation. I also used the feedback I got mon my structure for my RPO to make sure I dont make the same mistakes I did then
Experiments
This week I finally started working with the piezo sensor properly. It was honestly quite confusing at first, nothing was behaving the way I expected, and I kept second-guessing whether the wiring was wrong or the sensor was just too sensitive for its own good. After a lot of trial and error, plus way too many YouTube tutorials, I began to understand how the sensor actually responds to even the tiniest pressure or vibration. Once that clicked, it started feeling like a natural fit for what I wanted to do: using physical force and touch to trigger sound.
I began by testing it without any objects, just pressing and tapping directly on the sensor to see how stable the readings were. When that started working reliably, I introduced the little Snowman LEGO figure to see if I could stabilise the sensor by placing some weight on top. Surprisingly, that part was easier than I thought, the slight weight made the responses more controllable, and it also made the interaction feel more intentional.
After that, I moved on to connecting everything to p5.js. I worked on a sketch where touching or pressing the Snowman would generate visuals and trigger sound at the same time. It was a small moment, but seeing the physical gesture translate into both audio and visual behaviour made the whole idea of “pressure as sound” finally feel real. It also made me think more about how subtle the system needs to be how even small shifts in pressure can completely change the experience.
