DKREATES

Overview

Sound Clouds is an interactive installation where participants’ movements generate playful visuals and soundscapes, turning curiosity into shared, collective expression. It highlights the joy of collective interaction while pointing toward future possibilities in adaptive, responsive environments.

My Role

Interactive Systems Engineer and UX Researcher

Team

Expressive Machinery Lab at Georgia Tech

In Sound Clouds, an AI system shifts a soundscape in the room depending on the location of large scale, floating inflatables. Participants are invited to push the inflatables around the room to see how the pitch, tempo, and light changes. In doing so, participants are invited to form their own "mental models" for where the ambient intelligence is and how it operates. These mental models are explored further in a creative interview and survey study after participants leave the exhibit.

Participant interactions

People who stepped into Sound Clouds couldn’t help but play. What started as curiosity quickly turned into joy—waving, moving, and exploring how the clouds responded. The installation brought out a sense of childlike wonder, leaving participants smiling, laughing, and fully immersed in the moment.

How participants felt?

I felt like I was in a space that was a little disconnected from the chaos and erraticness of everyday life.

It’s like when you forget your current worries and evade stress, just to feel connected to nature in the same way.

I feel like I might cry, it gives me the sensation that I'm swimming in a lake that is very peaceful, and I don't have to do anything.

I felt like I was in a space that was a little disconnected from the chaos and erraticness of everyday life.

It’s like when you forget your current worries and evade stress, just to feel connected to nature in the same way.

I feel like I might cry, it gives me the sensation that I'm swimming in a lake that is very peaceful, and I don't have to do anything.

I felt like I was in a space that was a little disconnected from the chaos and erraticness of everyday life.

It’s like when you forget your current worries and evade stress, just to feel connected to nature in the same way.

I feel like I might cry, it gives me the sensation that I'm swimming in a lake that is very peaceful.

Design

Sound Clouds reimagines interaction by making largescale, floating, inflatable objects into tactile and responsive interfaces. Through a tightly integrated system of computer vision and embedded sensors, these inflatables react to motion and spatial positioning.

Inflatables size in comparison to human body

Overview of the system

Top down view of the exhibit space

Top down view of the

exhibit space

View from the GoPro

How it works?

Cloud 1 is in zone #8

Participant A gives cloud 1 a strong push, sending it diagonally across the space.

Cloud 1 stops at grid zone #6. The color of the cloud changes respectively.

Cloud 1 enters zone #6

Cloud 1 now in zone #6

Cloud 1 changes color from green to purple. The change also activates the speaker close to zone #6 and triggers a sound sample.

Participant B now moves cloud 1 from zone #6 to zone #4.

Cloud 1 is moved to zone #4

Cloud 1 now in zone #4

Cloud 1 changes color to pink indicating a change in location. This change also triggers the speaker close to that zone to add the respective sound sample.

"In our element"

Setting up the light fixture

Lighting up the fixture

Placing the fixture inside the orbs. (We improvised and used pringles cans for housing.)

Placing the fixture inside the orbs. (We had to improvise and ended up resorting to pringles cans for housing.)

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