Assignment: Midterm Project 1: Group project proposal

Collaborators: bobacita, Becky

Gear Toy
We envision a surface where a user can play with linking gears together to create music—effectively creating music from mechanical action.
We envision the toy having various sound clips ‘attached’ to individual gears, correlating the speed the gear rotates and the frequency with which the clip plays. Different mechanical components could be added for visual interest and variety, and some components could change the modulation of sound clips in various ways.
Toys involving gears have long been a popular toy for children, and incorporating the mathematics of gear ratios into a musical toy would create an interesting learning component.
The toy would also be a great way for multiple players to collaborate in creating the music at the same time, improvising along the way.  Along the lines of being used as a teaching tool, working together in this way can be instrumental in teaching the values of cooperation among schoolchildren.
We may choose to augment the sounds on the gears with lights or other artistic features for an aesthetically pleasing art component.
Our intended audience ranges from kids to DJs to electronic music enthusiasts.  The toy could be a very rewarding medium between parents and children for teaching linearity and during storytelling.

Future directions
We imagine a variety of ways to expand this core concept. One of our favorites is the possibility to collect sound clips from the world around us, possibly through some sort of camera peripheral so that sounds could be ‘tagged’ with photos. These sound clips tagged with pictures could be attached to gears using a computerized library. We imagine that the tactile, collaborative format could be used in developing games or storytelling applications as well.

Related Works and References
We plan to learn about past research that could inform both the technical design of the Gear Toy and the potential behaviors of the toy.