I’ve narrowed down (tough, it was) my research options to the following three options:
1) Taking on and readdressing Formosa’s “tools for women” effort.
Why? Because a closest friend of mine is an OB/gyn (specializing in providing abortions in rural regions normally lacking in such resources) and despite Formosa’s arguments about small women and large utensils in hospital work, she notes little worry to said topic. Most of her technological/instrument woes lean toward patient compliance and fit.
2) A machine that uses flex sensors to detect movement and change in facial muscles/mechanics, output TBD.
Why? Because I’m absolutely fascinated by the physics of sound, the origin of the phonetic alphabet (Phoenician/Greek war tool later adapted by the Romans), and the mechanics of singing.
3) Sensory Swapping for the deaf.
Why? My undergraduate thesis was an animated redesign of closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing. It demanded captions that were in time with the film sounds; sensitive to volume, intonation, cadence and semantics; and provided animators with a package of animation algorithms for specific common emotions/sounds.
Thus far I’ve just being openly and freely pursuing, the three topics without any direct initiative for a final product, just to get my feet wet, get excited and narrow the decision-making process.
RESEARCH PROGRESS :
1) One quick discussion has been had with the renegade abortionist, leading me in the direction of looking into how patients fit the tools that doctors use rather than how the tools fit the doctors.
2) By far the most promising topic thus far. Found two exceptional pieces on not just the muscles of the face but the muscular and structural mechanics of speech AND two solid journal articles about digitizing facial tracking. I’m not sure exactly what I can do with the data from examining facial muscle movement during speech but I feel like this subject potentially has a LOT of depth and the opportunity to combine with subject three. After reading the better part of The Mechanics of the Human Voice, and being inspired by the Physiology of Phonation chapter, I’m now considering developing a system of sensors (most likely flex sensors and a camera, and/or something that can track vocal cord movement) to log the muscle position of singers during different styles and pitches in an attempt to funnel the data into an audio output that translates the sound. For example, is there a particular and common muscle contraction/extension that occurs during high C? The computer sees that contraction and plays the note.
3) Read a few chapters of David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. The book is both wonderful and misleading. Toting itself as an enlightening journey through the brain, it eventually reveals its true agenda:an argumentative piece angled to sway common folk into reconsidering their opinions on criminal law and sentencing. Regardless, the Testimony of the Senses chapter does an incredible job of describing how little data (by comparison to what’s out there) our sensory sensors actually pull in and underlining the fact that it really just is data by referencing the effect of sensory innovations on people like Mike May (a man who lost his sight at age 3, regained it, and could not reconcile the meaning of visual data for a fairly long time) and Eric Weihenmayer (an extreme rock climber who uses a sonar sensor connected to a grid on his tongue to “see” mountains during unassisted climbs).