Your proposal holds intriguing ideas that are definitely worth exploring. I was particularly attracted by the intuition of a shift from the use of technology to decrypt a language in nonhuman organisms to the construction of alternative forms of language among humans. The artefact/practice side is little developed so far in regards to your research.
In my design I will consider how human speech and vocalisation can be eliminated. The design strategy will focus on the use of 'barriers' such as masks and helmets to limit human speech behaviour. --Each individual will simulate this "loss of speech". The next step would be to consider how to use non-human language to replace/construct new forms of communication.
“I will re-imagine a new environment and a new way of communicating and feeling between people, based on the technical means of Max MSP to visualize this new "language" of expression.”
This is very broad, and you don’t explain your process. Try to think about the practice side not as an illustration but as an inherent aspect of the research. How will your experimentations help you develop the questions you ask? That should come before the choice of the “technical means” of Max MSP. What are you trying to achieve, and why is Max Msp the best tool to do so? What limits does it hold? Is there a way to overcome them by combining different tools? What is the new environment that you are building? Try to frame its properties. Same for the “new ways of communicating and feeling” that is a vast domain. Is it really new, or are you pointing and deciding to reveal one existing characteristic of human communication that is in your opinion disregarded? Is it nonverbal communication that you want to research? Ways of communicating that unconscious but already organising our social interactions.
Process: maxmsp is just one of the tools to implement my design concept. To be more specific, I intend to use maxmsp and arduino as my implementation method. maxmsp will generate a new sound that was created to replace human speech. It is a new solution after the proposed stripping of human language. But the triggering mechanism for this new sound will be implemented through the arduino. Such as gas, breathing, temperature, body movement, infrared sensing, etc. But so far I don't have a clear idea of what method to use to trigger the new sounds.
maxmsp is able to process any sound through different oscillators, a process similar to "encryption" and "transcription". It is possible to produce a random cut of unique sounds. I call it a new "language". The limitation of maxmsp is that the sound input is limited to MIDI or microphone. So to solve this problem I will choose the Arduino's multiple sensors as a way to solve the problem.
The new environment being conceived: a space for pure communication, a social space. People are now moving from face-to-face communication to computer-to-computer communication. Both are ways of communicating, but in my opinion they are not so pure. People have their own social masks and social strategies. The concept of "faces" and "poies" made me question this overly "complex" face-to-face relationship. I therefore sought to construct a 'single' and 'pure' social place in which to explore the simplicity of human relationships. "The 'new language' is more the performance/expression I chose for this research. "To be valued only when lost" is also a design strategy. By depriving people of their language in this scenario, the importance of face-to-face communication was brought to light.
The proposal could still gain clarification and articulation on several points. I will try to break down a few to make sense of what a methodology could be when crafting your research (there isn’t one way and this is only a pointer!). When you introduce your paper with the question “what is left of our face-to-face relationship today?” - it seems to frame your position, we would expect it to be geared towards elements of communication that can only exist when sharing the same physical space.
“Communicate through breathing or other none human characteristics” - I would be mindful of your phrasings - breathing is a very human characteristic! It might not be the basis of human language (even though it does modify the tone of the messages we deliver).
Response: Yes, breathing was just one of the ways I could think of in the situation - how often people breathe, how long they breathe, how warm they are, etc. when words are taken away. Breathing makes me think of a lot of emotional expressions. For example, breathing slows down when you are afraid. When I am angry, I breathe heavier, so I choose to use my breath to express this idea. But as I said before, there are many more ways of expressing my concept.
Your theoretical context gives an interesting pointer that could enrich your research. You only bring in 1 reference (which is probably not enough considering the ambition of your project) - the cultural aspect in (verbal and?) nonverbal communication. Are there cultural specificities to the way we communicate without language just as much as there we use different languages (the answer is yes how will you position yourself towards that, will you focus on one culture? Compare two?).
Response: Given the multifaceted nature of language and its many attributes, I would consider focusing my research on social attributes, i.e. sociology. Because I think this discipline is based on some commonalities of people around the world. If I were to focus on language I think it would be a departure from what I described earlier as the "purely social field". For example: social discourse, hypocritical meetings, staged chats, conversations with a purpose ......
Are you trying to learn from nonhuman organisms’ ways of communicating? A few projects emerged in the past years, that would for instance reveal communication between mushrooms. That’s an anthropocentric take on living organisms, we assume they should have a language, as we do. Is your point to do the opposite, learn from other living organisms’ ways of communicating to build an alternative human language?
Response: Yes, non-human forms of communication are of great interest to me. I have chosen to use "silence" to construct a new language precisely because of the structure and cultural context of the various human linguistic and cultural contexts. Human language has a decibel, a frequency, a rhythm. I wanted to choose a completely different form of communication for my research (non-human). To study the role of bioelectricity, smell, colour, etc. in the act of "communication".
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