h a l f b a k e r yPoof of concept
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Hidden microphones and speakers in the
walls loop sounds from a week ago
superimposed on the current day. (And maybe
the week before, at 1/2 the volume, and so on.)
Even if you're living alone, there would be a
stampede of your old selves trudging into
the kitchen around 7:30 am, turning on
one
more in an ocean of softly sloshing
coffee machines...
(Thanks to [hippo] for the name and the inspiration.)
Variations:
[kimby]: there could be a
half-life setting where after x number of
days, half of the sounds generated on a
particular day in the past would have
decayed into oblivion. Others might
persist for much longer. You could do a
sort of sonar equivalent of carbon dating
on your own life.
Holograms would be even better.
[syost]: this warrants a separate idea, having something to do with the special ability of the
main character of the movie Brother From Another Planet: with a certain effort he could sense all the human history of
the place where he stood -- particularly poignant at Ellis Island (erstwhile starting point for many US immigrants).
Maybe a video camera pointing to a public spot snapping still pictures every minute, with a big monitor nearby, with
this effect? A long feedback loop would be more interesting. Frippertronics for video.
[reensure] Pictures from home would add a nostalgic and commercial value to the plan. After a period of absence, the house could
syndicate the last loop of eclectic recording through public channels. Soap may be replaced by 'interpining' or the love of
one empty home for another.
Kudos to [hippo] for suggesting to use sounds from
a week ago, not from a day ago.
Film Noir Home
http://www.halfbake.../Film_20Noir_20Home deja vu home started out as an annotation to Film Noir Home. [jutta, Aug 08 2000]
photographic mirror
http://www.halfbake...otographic_20mirror Furniture [jutta, Aug 08 2000]
Geocorder
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/geocorder "Voices from the past" are accessible anywhere with Geocorder! [miles, Feb 08 2002]
(?) Light of Other Days
http://www.scifi.co...ive/shaw/shaw1.html by Bob Shaw [zen_tom, May 24 2007]
[link]
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This is not constructive criticism, but I think that if someone wired my house like that and then suddenly turned it on, I would just cry and cry and cry. Imagine what it'd be like after you broke up with someone. |
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Of course, mcfrank, many people would become so depressed by the dull, repetitive tedium of their dead-end existence which the deja vu home would reveal that they'd be driven to suicide. However, think of all those other people who would use the deja vu home as a catalyst for change in their life, cease living the same day over and over again and live each day as it comes. I think that would make it all worthwhile.
It gets my croissant vote anyway. |
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Deja Vu Film Noir Home: "I sat alone in the bedroom. With every week that passed since she left me the squeaking of the bedsprings grew steadily quieter." |
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I hate to burst anyone's artistic bubble but realistically this idea is crazy. It would be enough to drive someone mad. Why on earth would anyone want to hear themselves over and over again? I don't even like the sound of my voice let alone hearing something I said a week ago...again, and again. Where are you going with this idea? Would you really find it soothing? For me it would be spooky or at the very least annoying. I just don't see the benefit of something like this. |
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Soothing? No, certainly not. It would be an interactive art project (for an audience of one), not something intended to be "soothing" or "beneficial"
in an immediate sense. |
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It would be an investigation into the nature of memory. Sounds from a week ago come up and remind you, just like memories float to the top sometimes. Sounds from the past would merge and soften, just like old memories grow fuzzy. |
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The new form of memory would make its subject more aware of how one is spending one's life. That's a worthy goal, I think. |
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Hooking up your house to a different, random, "Deja Vu Home" in your neighbourhood every day would give you (besides tantalising glimpses into strangers' lives) the "Jamais Vu Home". |
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This reminds me of a chapter in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid Acid Test... they wire up a forest (I'm not making this up) with loads of mics, each with a different delay built in. These all braodcast through a sound system hidden in the trees.....take acid and go for a wander. |
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genuine -- I for one would really love the deja vu house. The randomness of memory is a wonderful catalyst for ideas. This would be something like running across old notes I've written to myself. |
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I mean, people take video of themselves and their families on purpose, and usually get crummy shots of uninteresting things. This could actually preserve some really good stuff. |
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So a slight enhancement would make this really useful; add a feature to save anything that you still think is really cool after two weeks. The system automatically edits together a "best of 2001" video which you can ship out to your friends and family at Christmas time. |
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this would be really good for the incidents that we tag as "you will laugh at this one day" - like when you fell down the stairs, or you got really drunk and snogged somebody inappropriate or in the middle of a really bad argument you yelled at the carolsingers to "and you can b******r off as well! |
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On the plus side it would be great to hear over and over a night of mad passionate love making. It would also be a burglar deterant hearing your sounds all the time. |
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On the minus side I would hate to hear middle of the night trips to the bathroom and the passing of gas or that pesky mosquito in my ear on a hot summer night. |
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What about the feedback effect? As ridiculous as this sounds, I'd love to build something like this-- I can leave notes to myself by speaking now, and I'll hear them again in a week, by which time I'll have forgotten saying them. But how do I get new recordings not to include the audio from old replayed recordings? |
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I can't hear myself think. Would that I had turned my music down, please. |
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Half-awake the other night I had a strange dream which I thought at the time would be the perfect HalfBakery idea. On reflection it's not, but I thought it might be worth an annotataion here: This would be a service which would phone you up and, when you answer the phone, play a minute of silence down the phone at you. On subsequent days it would play the recording of you being silent from the previous day's phonecall. The purpose of this would be to prompt you to take a minute out of your busy day just to sit and reflect, meditatively. By playing the previous day's 'silent' phonecall back to you you would be reminded of how you had done this the previous day and how it had calmed you/ helped you to resume your work with renewed enthusiasm, etc. |
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Baked as a deja vue statue. An artist made a statue (of some sort) that recorded sounds, and played them back at random intervals. This was placed in the lobby of the board of directors. First they all loved the statue. Later they had the statue removed when it appeared to uncover soundbites that should have remained secret. |
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I'd like to see a link for that spekkie - it sounds too much like an urban myth I came across a while back. |
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(aside - if you compressed the data to MP3 (bitrate 128kbps stereo) on the fly you get about a meg of data a minute from music. Admittedly you'd probably get much better compression in the deja vue home due to long silences but using this figure for the moment, you'd need about 10GB of storage space to loop a week for one room.) |
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With 40G HDDs going for close to $100 right now, you could hold a month worth for not too much money, at that estimate. |
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st3f - your comment about compressing an MP3 "on the fly" actually sent my mind in another direction. What if the recordings of events in the house were made by either a generic brand housefly wired for sound or a mechanical fly of some description a la "if I could be a fly on the wall"? |
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//there could be a half-life setting// |
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You mean Black Mesa, crawling with various flavours of alien? |
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//What about the feedback effect? As ridiculous as this sounds, I'd love to build something like this-- I can leave notes to myself by speaking now, and I'll hear them again in a week, by which time I'll have forgotten saying them. But how do I get new recordings not to include the audio from old replayed recordings?// |
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This wouldn't be a problem if the sounds are replayed at half-volume. A replayed sound that gets recorded again will then be at quarter-volume next time it's replayed, and so on. |
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//But how do I get new recordings not to include the audio from old replayed recordings?// |
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Since the playback system and the recording system are linked, it could use sound cancellation to cancel out the broadcast audio from the newly recorded audio. |
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// various flavours of alien // MMMM Alien... |
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Not good if theres a death in the family, or an argument. |
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It's better to move forward in life than to dwell on (or in) the past. Plus, I think repetitive deja vu would be a scary thing. |
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I think I've seen this before... |
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