Still Frames

RnD

Light Projections RnD: Testing the threshold between legible and abstract

Tools: C4D, AE, AI

Role: Concept, Art Direction, Execution

Sound Design: Tom Campbell

Concept

Attune is a speculative product that gives users curatorial control over their acoustic environment. Beyond the binary of standard noise-cancellation, it offers selective control: choosing what to amplify, soften, or silence entirely through real-time sound identification.

Designed for urban environments, it aims to bring forward what noise pollution rendered inaudible: birdsong beneath traffic, wind through buildings, a conversation, the rhythmic texture of a place.

This is grounded in a growing body of research showing that, in neuro-typical humans nature-based sounds offer measurable benefits to the nervous system, while anthropogenic noise actively disrupts those effects. Drawing from composer R. Murray Schafer's concept of 'tuning the world,' Attune offers customisable pre-sets that adapt to environment, task, and sensory need.

It’s a harm reduction tool rather than solution. It can't fix systemic acoustic pollution, but it might help preserve listening capacity in conditions that risk producing acoustic numbness and associated negative mental health effects.

Treatment

Visually, one of the aims was to use light projections to show the interaction between the earbuds and their sonic environment in an abstract way. The light design on the case takes its cue from dappled light filtering through tree canopy. Using green as its base, drawing on its documented calming and grounding effects, the diffused, impressionistic quality of the projection is set in deliberate contrast to the product's clean geometric lines. 

The product itself remains static and sculptural throughout, while the environment shifts around it; camera and product movements are slow and considered, a pace that intentionally echoes the product's goal of slowing the nervous system's rhythm. The emotional arc moves from a denser, more chaotic opening to a gradual settling, mirroring the journey from overwhelm to presence and calm. 

The light effects were created through a combination of AI and After Effects.

Sound plays a central role in the narrative, tracing the process of curation through an interplay of foley, silence, and music. We move from the full texture of a city street, voices, mechanical noise, urban atmosphere, through moments of granular control where sounds are selectively isolated, softened, or silenced. Nature sounds emerge, voices fade, and eventually music takes over, inhabiting the space that noise once filled.