Research
At the beginning of the project my initial interests lay within space design, and specifically how the design of a space influences the way in which you interact within the environment. From here I began to think about spaces that I had encountered recently, and how people move around them. This guided me to look at that way in which we move around airports - as I had been in various airports in the weeks previous to the project. So, I began to brain storm my thoughts on airports.

From my brainstorming session I decided to look at social semiotics, specifically semiotics within architecture, to help me understand more about why our built environments are they way they are.

"Form follows function" - Louis Sullivan, cropped up time and time again, this made me think about where interaction comes into the design of a space. Does function follow interaction or interactions follow form, or interaction follow function?

At this stage I was becoming less and less sure about what my aim was with my project - I did not want to develop a research project, so I changed the way in which I was looking at spacial design and how it influences the way in which we interact within it.

I decided to look at the way in which a public space - like an airport - was designed, and the social consequences it has on the people within them, which would allow me to develop ideas of how to create a new kind of interaction within a public/social space that improves the experience of the environment.

This was the turning point in the early stages of developing my project idea. I began to look at responsive environments, and how these kind of interactions could be interpreted within a public waiting space, a kind of non-place.

Existing interactive installations
I began looking into existing interactive installations, and was directed to ParticleTecture: Interactive Granular Soundscapes for Architectural Design (From the 2007 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME07), New York) by Joanne Jakovich, who had created an interactive system that was responsive to body movement, generating audio and visual outputs. The type of interaction used within this piece of work is similar to the way in which I envisioned users to interact with my project; not with a keyboard or any other peripheral device, but through body movements. 
sonic tai chi site

The RCA website became a useful source for looking at existing interactive installations; from here I found Joel Gethin Lewis, an interaction designer who has created some interesting pieces of work. click here to view his portfolio
He then joined the Universal Visual Artists who have produced some beautiful pieces of interaction design that are light based. A piece that stood out was "Volume" - displayed in the v&a in december 2006.

Another piece created by the uva that was interesting, was a prototype they developed.

The simplicity of this prototype stood out, and showed me that a simple interactive piece would be more effective, as long as the response time between the users movement and the system output was almost instantaneous.  

Another interesting resource that I looked at was Sound Environments: music for public spaces by Robin Minard. Minard himself is an installation artist who deals with acoustic space in an urban world that is increasingly polluted with noise. His work focuses on redefining the concept of functional music in the context of public spaces, as he points out the ear is rarely a factor in the planning and design of architecture and  urban infrastructure.
click here to view his site

His work brought to my attention the importance of audio within public environments.
“…the ear is drawn to rhythmical sounds.” –p64 Sound environments: music for public spaces.

Ethnography
As my aim is to create a piece of work that sits within public spaces, I decided to do some ethnography, observing they way people move within public spaces. Within the space there was a vast volume of people moving in two directions, however, the environment itself was very linear, influencing their direction. The only kind of social interaction that occurred within the space was on the outer edges, where there are seats and space away from the main body of movement.  Whilst walking through the space I decided to record the sounds of the environment, where an interactive installation used to be situated.

The installation itself was primarily for children. A pond was projected onto the floor, when you walked through the pond, it would make splashing noises and the water would ripple. Within the vicinity of the installation there are numerous vending machines and two small merry-go-round amusements for children. The installation was possibly here because of these elements.

After listening back to the sound recordings, I realised there would be volume problems with generating audio, so I need to think about the positioning of speakers, and the volume of the audio; loud enough to be heard by the people within the space, but not too loud as to irritate and distract those in the surrounding environment. I also found a sound recording from Nice airport, that I accidentally recorded during the summer; listening to this made me think about how audio would be affected in a public waiting space by tannoy announcements.