The trip to the anechoic chamber was one of the highlights of this class. I loved having the experience of sitting in the room all by myself, something which was somewhat meditative except that tiny little details such as the light from the camera would become major distractions. I also loved spying on people with the infrared camera as they had their individual moment in the room.
Some pictures (I'll remove these pictures if the subject prefers not to have them online, just let me know.)
I really missed a majority of the explanation of what exactly they do in the lab, It is to my best understanding that they document frog reactions to sound. Being in the sound proof chamber was kind of exciting, I listened to the sounds of frogs, and I think that the rhythmic vocalizations of frogs is something worthy of exploring, the more interesting component of this was the acoustical explorations that the grad students created. I never used a bow to play cymbals before, but seeing/hearing/playing these in a sound proof room was far more interesting than a speaker playing frog sounds. I think that really awesome psychological effects of sounds and our mind state could be explored in these rooms, not sure exactly what I envision to be such an experience, and the lack of the surround sound that the chamber possesses was a slight disappointment.
http://min.us/lQWYLxh63TPHA
We will meet at the St Paul Student Center today at 2pm.
You can use the campus connector to get there.
Alejandro Velez, a PhD student and researcher in Mark Bee's research group will meet us and bring us to the
Animal Communications Lab.
After introducing us to their research with frogs and frog vocalizations, including the "cocktail party problem", we will experience the anechoic chambers that they use for research.
Bring sounds to explore in this unusual space:
audio files in WAV format, objects that produce sound, your voice, body percussion, etc.
