Lingjing Yin

|Autism+Design, what they can do for each other?|, SimplyDesign, Tuesday September 6, 2011

|Not Just for Art's Sake|, The Dabbler, Saturday June 25, 2011

|Helen Hamlyn Design Awards 2011|, Dexigner, Saturday July 9, 2011

This September Touch the Sound was featured on several online magazines and blogs including core77,  Arts Thread and Dezeen.

Core77.com

ArtsThread Blog

Dezeen.com

Check out Yamaha's new webpage about 'Resonance' Project. Including an overview of selected works undertaken by fellow students from the Royal College of Art's Design Products department.

Digital Version here

Photo by LuMing Xu

W-The Week Magazine

L-Lingjing Yin

W- How did you start this project? Where is the inspiration from?

L-  The project Touch the Sound starts from YAMAHA workshop ‘RESONANCE’, during my 2^nd year study in Design Products, Royal College of Art. The brief is to design something bringing the musician in a performance much closer to its audiences. My interests and research are revolving around Sound, Physicality, Communication and Emotion. Actually, the original idea of combining human contact with sound comes from a massage therapy that I experienced before, and then I started questioning:

. What if the human body is capable of storing music like Vinyl?

. What if our body became the acoustic container of our memory?

. If we use our body as an instrument, will different people have different sound quality?

. Will larger people sound much nicer than petite people? What would emotion sound like?

W- It seems an ongoing project, how will you develop or extend it?

L-  Yes, Touch the Sound is an ongoing project as well as a series of project about connecting people of different ages and abilities. It consisting of bespoke devices for an autistic child, wearable devices, dance performance, artistic film, sound design and more. They are all based on the technology of human capacitance sensing and motion tracking in a creative way. I’ve got the plan to patent the technology due to its novelty. However, technology is just a material. It has been and will keep on acting as a seed for my further exploration on interactive installation, live dance performance and products for real end users. I will keep developing these 3 approaches in the future. 

A new interactive installation is on the way for an upcoming showcase with YAMAHA during London design week, 2011. At the same time, I am also really interested in the possibility of delivering a proper dance performance using my device in collaboration with choreographers, dancers and musicians. Of course, I won’t be away from the research and products that I already developed for autistic child. Due to the complicity of Autism Spectrum Disorders, a wider range of user group would be investigated and prototype would be tested. 

W- It is very hard to define whether your project is design or art, what do you think about it?

L-  Why not both? To me, I am stand in between. I can’t say it is art, although it might borrow heavily from art in terms of methods and approaches. If it is regarded as art, which make it easier to deal with, but if it remains as design it is more disturbing. My work relies hugely on research and interviews, so that it could stays really close to everyday life and suggests that the communication of every day as we know it could be different. When I look back to the past 6 months, it is a tough journey combining technology exploration, hands-on interaction, people-centred research, via inter-disciplinary collaborative working models. 

W- This idea can be used in many areas, like autism, art and so on, have you considered to putting it into market?

L-  I like how open the project is at this moment. I am considering choosing certain area to extend the project depending on what opportunities I will have. The idea of putting it into market could be attractive since it would push the project into reality with real demand of end users. It will take time to understand the market and business model and strategy from an innovative idea. However I would love to try.

W- What have you got most during study in RCA?

L-  The experience here in the RCA is amazing for me. I’ve learned a lot about myself as an artist and designer. It’s been a journey of trying to find myself among so many possibilities. During my studies here, I have perceived that a good way for me to tackle a brief was to work from the very beginning in parallel on the research and the development of concrete outcomes. Even though the outcomes I produce at the beginning are not totally relevant because of the lack of research, they help my creativity to be vivid all along the research and to end up more easily with interesting design solutions. Sometimes, they come back to feed the research and help to guide it.

RCA forces me to explore myself, break out of my comfort zone, but never alone. Here you’ve got the most crazy and creative students from all over the world, debating, sharing, struggling together. You always find great people to work with, and push each other further. I remember clearly that before I come to RCA, I read about how Ron Arad (our previous department head) described the course’s aim is to take in eminently employable people and make them unemployable. Until now I could finally understand his words that RCA doesn’t teach its student with any particular skill. Instead, it gives the student an ability of pulling up a project from scratch. This ability leads you to wanting to work for yourself. 

W- Do you have any future plan after graduation?

L-  Currently, I am preparing my upcoming exhibition during London design week, working with sound designers for an interactive installation. Afterwards, I will hopefully work as a free lance artist or designer. I prefer to keep travelling as well as working.