Scattered revelation speaker
Orange section
A quick summary of the tower of babel.
The story of the tower of babel begins after the floods disappeared from the earth and God had told Moses to spread and inhabit the land and for his future generations to do the same. Well, they did that for a while until one of Moses great-grandson decided differently. Nimrod (the great-grandson) and the people that followed him decided not to continue to spread across the land. They would make a permanent city instead. Worrying about Gods wrath Nimrod came up with the scheme to build a tower that could reach the heavens and would keep him and his people safe if there was another flood. But it would also act as a place where he can exact vengeance on God if he were to cause a flood again. Because if it were as high as heaven he could confront God.
Anyway, while it was being constructed God was aware of the rebellious nature that the tower represented. By not destroying the tower god was showing that he was merciful but to make sure to prevent any more rebellious acts he confused the language so that various people couldn't understand each other thus causing them to scatter among the earth once again.
There are many opinions on what the tower of babel story is meant to represent. I won't be focusing on that instead I'm more interested in how I can create a concept of a working product/object that represents the word section as well as the tower of babel story.
It is very unlikely that I'm able to find out what the supposed single language was during the tower of babel but I can look into what is considered a single or even a universal language of modern times. After researching into this I came across two spoken languages that can both be considered a universal language for various reasons. The first is English. The website Babbel magazine released an article addressing this topic which states:
''There is little doubt that English has become that very universal language for much of the world. There are roughly 360 million people who speak the language natively, with an estimated 1.5 billion people in total who speak it around the world (that’s roughly 20 percent of the world’s population). Some sources estimate that in at least 45 countries, more than half of the people speak English to some extent. There are also at least 25 recognized forms of pidgin English thought to exist today.
It holds de jure official language status — meaning the law explicitly recognizes it — in about 60 countries, including Barbados, Ireland, Kenya, Malawi, Jamaica, Singapore, Zimbabwe, the Philippines, Canada and Papua New Guinea. It’s also one of the official languages of the United Nations and the European Union, and it’s the most studied language in the world — well ahead of French in second place.''
The article goes on to explain why this is and it is because of cultural growth and other aspects which can be looked into by clicking the button below that will lead to the site.
The second language is Esperanto. The reason being is that it is not primarily a natural language that changed over time. It is a constructed language used to communicate internationally by not needing to speak the same first language. But the benefit of learning Esperanto is that its other purpose which is that it makes it easier to learn other languages afterwards. This is because its creator saw the use of constructing a language that included mixed attributes from various European languages. Yet it has drawn a lot of criticism over the years from critics and representatives of various countries. The main criticism is that it neglects the culture of the original languages the words were gathered from. Therefore it doesn't support the idea of learning a language to learn about history or people of that culture.
Instead of picking either language, I will combine both because babel means confused noise but I won't be creating a new language that I will attempt to learn and speak. Because confused noise, in my opinion, makes me think of distortion, therefore, noise from speakers I like the idea of coming up with my own speaker concept.
The speaker concept will have the language included in some way but before I could decide on how that will be I wanted to look more into the symbolism of what a tower means as well as the rest of the word section.
The speaker concept will have the language included in some way but before I could decide on how that will be I wanted to look more into the symbolism of what a tower means as well as the rest of the word section.
What I came across was that a tower can represent a form of an unforeseen catastrophe in a tarot reading but when reversed can also represent a distribution of some sort. An unforeseen catastrophe can be described as a revelation which is a form of communication. Distribution can mean sharing, therefore, designing a speaker seems to be the right choice of representing this word section because a speaker communicates music as well as distributes it among the listeners. This did originally make me think of should I construct the speaker to make it look like a tower but I wasn't particularly keen on it but a tower is meant to be taller than wide and with that in mind I decided that I would include that principle in the eventual design concept.
My initial idea after this was to use the combined alphabet as the tower-like shape for the speaker. That quickly changed because the idea of placing letter after letter on top of each other just didn't look right in my head. What I realised was that the combined the alphabet is not visually confusing (i wanted to distance it as far as possible from its original languages) enough, I would need to recreate the letters into some other visual form. I started to experiment with how to portray the visual form of each letter by not how the letters look but how they sound. So I played the English and Esperanto languages on the windows media player and selected the various visualization screens with the intention of copying the images displayed and creating a 3d form from them. This didn't go to plan because the images were complex or too simple. My next idea was instead of trying to create new forms of the letters, why not look backwards to how the letters used to look.
While looking into how letters use to look I was also thinking about how I should present the joined alphabet. Because towers are taller than wide I started to consider the idea that if the speaker is going to be like a tower then it makes no sense for the language shown to be read horizontally. Instead, if it were to be read vertically (such as traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean) then it would fit the shape better. Shortly afterwards while looking for inspiration on how I can develop the joined alphabet I came across a numerical system that allowed numbers from 1 to 9999 to be written as single compound characters. These compound characters are primarily lined shapes. I was drawn to include this in the project some how because numbers are similar to a universal language. But i didn't want it to be for example a = 1 line or b=2 lines or c=3 lines etc, because this would be too straight forward. I weaned it to be as confusing as possible because babel means confusion.
While considering what to do I couldn't help but notice that my keypad resembled a brick layout (which reminded me of a tower structure) if you were to turn it 90 degrees. so I turned the joined alphabet into a keypad layout and then I turned that into a numerical system of my own.
The image above shows the development of how I've came up with the order of what could be displayed on the speaker. Yet I haven't actually figured out the shape of the speaker like tower. For this i started research into Babylonian belief and I came across a symbol associated with many of the clay tablets or imagery associated with Babylonian. This was the rod and ring symbol.
The rod and ring can be considered as either a symbol of divine authority or a measuring system. Divine authority is where the king or queen have been chosen by God and therefore have a divine relationship with the god they believe in. Therefore the authority they have been granted is gods authority hence you must follow it. The reason why it can be considered as a measuring system is that its a symbol that could possibly represent the person who sets the limit eg the person with the authority to command what is too much and too less in terms of governing power and what is best needed for the culture/society they are in charge of. Furthermore, the symbol could also represent divine justice in which a god uses the rod and ring to warn the people. This warning would be those who follow the gods will ascend to a heaven-like place and those who don't will descend to a hell-like place. Therefore the rod represents the boundary between heaven and hell and the ring represents the world in which the god has created.
So while looking further into all the different variations on what the symbol could mean I realised that usually before a divine judgment takes place a divine revelation is sometimes issued beforehand. considering how revelation had already come up in my research, for this project I decided that the rod and ring symbol would be the basis for the shape of the speaker. Another reason was that the idea of how it represents the boundary between heaven and hell also has a similar meaning of how the tower was being built to reach heaven and because I didn't want the speaker to look like a tower I decided this shape is best to represent it.
At this point, I know the initial shape of the speaker and what will be displayed on it. But what is displayed and how it looks is different in which I mean I've got the joined alphabet in numerical form to be placed on the rod and ring-shaped speaker but how will it look visually I which I mean what colour or material. well, first of all, it would need a large base to stop it from falling over and for that, a clay slab will be used. The reason being is that a lot of the Babylonian culture is referred to on clay slabs that tell history. So by having the ring and rod speaker shape sticking out of the clay is similar to projecting the history into a physical form.
I'm not too sure about the material of the speaker at the moment but I could add all the letters in their number form to create a number code to find a colour that represents the joined alphabet. This colour was Pantone pms 378.
I'm not too sure about the material of the speaker at the moment but I could add all the letters in their number form to create a number code to find a colour that represents the joined alphabet. This colour was Pantone pms 378.
Before I start considering the material choice I realised the size of the speaker is more important. The tower was meant to reach heaven. let's pretend the ceiling in a room is heaven and the room height rangers between 2m to 2.6 m (average Uk size). To make sure my speaker is not too tall it will be no larger than 2metres. So the rod part is 2 meters tall. the ring will be the average speaker size in which I mean the woofer (not including the casing of a speaker) which is 8 inches in diameter. Therefore the rod is 200cm high and the diameter of the speaker is 20.3cm.
The image above is one part of the speaker concept. it is the standing frame in which the actual speaker will be located on. The frame is the constructive output inspired by all the reseach and initial thinking shown before. Therefore this frame is my own perceptive on the tower of babel. This is a orthographic image so that the engravings on the rod can be seen. The rod and ring would be both made out of aluminium because originally I was going to go with steel yet it would most likely be to heavy. Hence aluminium is much less denser and also corrosion resistant.
Because of the amount of detail, the product would be better suited to made for order. To engrave the entire frame as a single piece would be difficult therefore the frame/rod, ring and base would come in exactly 5 pieces (shown in the below images). Before coating the aluminium with acrylic/enamel paint the surface would need to be etched and primed. once the paint has dried the parts can be engraved by using a laser engraving machine but it must be compatible for cylinder shaped parts.
The clay slab (the base) is actually covering a steel base that is similar to how a garden umbrella stand works which is screwing /twisting the pole/rod part in to the base. The ring would also be screwed/twisted into the side of the rod and would be located halfway so that it isn't to high to insert the speaker in. The engraving on the ring spell out SR speaker. which stands for scattered revelation. The reason for this is that it refers to the end of the tower of babel story in which the people scattered around the earth and the reason for revelation is that it is primarily an act of communicating which a speaker does with music.
Furthermore because its made to order I liked the idea of displaying the issue number (in the same alphabetic form that is already shown) on the back of the rod. An example of this is shown in the below images.
The image above shows the back of the rod where the issue number would be displayed.
The above image is my attempt of trying to create a circuit diagram for what is needed for the speaker. The problem is its difficult to find out the right information. That being said I was able to find a few examples online to give me guidance. I realised that because I wasn't actually designing the components of the speaker since they would most likely be off the shelf, I didn't really need to go to such lengths. The two image below are quick drawings labelling and showing how everything would be connected inside the speaker casing.
It would be a Bluetooth speaker that doesn't need to be plugged in during use, only when charging. Therefore it will have to easier to remove from the ring and to reattach it. The benefit of this is that there will be no cables hanging and obstructing the visual presence of the frame ( the frame is the rod and ring, tower in spired shape). I initially considered adding various switches/controls on the clay base as well but I realised that if it can be controlled by Bluetooth then there would be no need.
To remove the speaker for charging you first need to unscrew the bolt that locks it in place. Once removed you can precede to pull the speaker out. The grill tat is left on the ring wont move because it is bonded to the inside of the ring.
The charging port is located below where the hole of the side screw
