Investigators
Principal Investigator: Nadia Mounajjed, School of Architecture, University of Sheffield
Co-Investigator: Jennifer G. Sheridan, BigDog Interactive, Lancaster.
Co-Investigator: Nick Bryan-Kinns, IMC Group, Computing Department, Queen Mary, University of London.
Co-Investigator: Chengzhi Peng, School of Architecture, University of Sheffield
Co-Investigator: Stephen Walker, School of Architecture, University of Sheffield
Threshold6 (2006) was an interactive, site-specific installation of interactive wind chimes. It was located in the eastern wing of the entrance foyer in the Queen’s Building at the Queen Mary University of London. 
The architecture used is illustrated in below. It consisted of Tmote Invent artifacts installed in three of the chimes. These were programmed using TinyOS to send tilt information wirelessly to a central laptop located in a room next to the installation. When the motion of a person (or a breeze) was detected in a Tmote, the laptop triggered the playback of an associated audio track; when there was no interaction or wind, the associated playback was paused. Audio was wirelessly transmitted to these sensor chimes via three separate audio channels from the laptop PC. We used Max/MSP to control the sound without any noticeable lag in interaction.
The figure below illustrates the actual laptop PC (left of image) and multichannel audio setup (right of image) used to drive the soundscape from the adjacent room.
Mounajjed, N., Peng, C., and Walker, S. (2007) Ethnographic Interventions: A Strategy and Experiments in Mapping Socio Spatial Practices , Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments.
Mounajjed, N., Peng, C., Walker, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Sheridan, J. (2006). Threshold 2006, in Proceedings of CCID Symposium, HCI 2006, London, UK
Mounajjed, N., Peng, C., Walker, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Sheridan, J. (2006). Threshold 1 in PSI # 12: Performing Rights Conference , 13-17 June 2006 QMUL, London (Interactive installation)
Mounajjed, N., Peng, C., Walker, S., Bryan-Kinns, N. and Sheridan, J. (2006). Threshold 2 in CCID Symposium, 12 September 2006 QMUL (Interactive installation)
Threshold is jointly funded by EPSRC Leonardo.Net research network and the Sheffield University Project Studentship. The technology research is funded by the EPSRC Equator Project. We wish to thank the following for their part in the realisation of this installation: Allan Lewis and Peter Williams (University of Sheffield). Thanks also to the Queen Mary, University of London for allowing us to exhibit the piece.