Cycle 2
Posted: December 9, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Exploring the “D” in DEMS.
For Cycle 2 I wanted to take some of the lessons learned from Cycle 1 and further develop them. (My Cycle 1 is the “Order of the Veiled Compass” project) My tendency is to focus on the building and engineering of projects and less so on the “devising”, this was an opportunity to take a deeper dive in to the part of DEMS I typically spend the least time on. My presentation was a simple PowerPoint slide show that explored how people interact with technology, not exactly riveting website material, so this post will present the information is , hopefully, a more interesting manner. The original presentation can be found here https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qVqp1khbiujVJ4hC5ohTrTZNLGGDL-AK/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=106949091808183906482&rtpof=true&sd=true
How do people interact with technology in both everyday life and in regards to an Experiential Media System? I identified what I believe are three key factors to our interactions, Cultural Conventions, Proximity, and the Physical Experience.
Since this post is on a website I can make several inferences about you (the reader). First, you have access to electricity and an internet connection. You can be anywhere on the earth, assuming you are indoors and there is a light switch, that switch is located within a foot or so of the doorway. If you have been a passenger in some sort of vehicle, that machine had a break peddle on the left and an accelerator on the right, with some type of switch within easy reach of the steering mechanism to activate turn signals. Cars, busses, trucks, etc… all share a similar technical language. An argument can certainly be made that many of these conventions are the result of Edison Electric, Westinghouse, and similar companies developing these technologies and distributing them, but the road to the present day is not as straight forward as it seams.
For example, I am 99.9999% confident that you can not drive a Model-T Ford. Looking at the above photo there are many familiar controls (assuming you can drive a stick). With the exception of the steering wheel and the gear shift lever, almost none of the familiar looking controls do what you think they do. It took awhile, but eventually the automakers of the world settled on a control layout that allows anyone who knows how to drive a car drive almost all other cars.
The key take away form all of this is that we are all conditioned to expect certain technologies to work is specific ways. Lights are turned on by a stitch by the door or a switch on the light itself. All cars have an accelerator and a break. None of us need a manual to use a faucet or garden hose, regardless of where on earth we find one. Any sink with a garbage disposal will have a control switch within a few feet of it.
We interact with technology is variety of ways, for this project I focused mainly on touch. Advances in machine vision and hearing have made it possible to interact with devices via gesture and our voice, but that is a conversation for a different day.
I wanted to take a closer look into what makes a physical interaction with technology a good one. This is personal preference of course, but I am confident that there are certain aspects we can all agree upon. One is that quality matters. Imagine you press a button on a vending machine or arcade game and its a plastic piece of junk that rattles, if it lights up it probably flickers, and it makes you press it several times to be sure it did something; that’s not the best interaction with technology. Compare that to a nice solid metal toggle switch, even better if that switch has some type of safety cover on it! I don’t want to go through the steps of launching a missile to make a pot of coffee, but I do appreciate solid feeling controls on the coffee maker.
Feedback is a critical component to the physical experience. A doorbell is an excellent example of a system with ambiguous feedback. You press the doorbell. Did it work and nobody is home? Did the doorbell not ring? Unless you are inside to hear it there is no indication that it worked or not, which is frustrating. It can be very frustrating when technology doesn’t let the user know that it is working. Imagine an elevator that didn’t indicate which floor it was going to, or a telephone that was perfectly silent until answered, those would be horrible user experiences!
Of particular interest to me and my home DEMS project, is the idea of proximity. When a user interacts with a piece of technology, how far away is the response? Is it at the users fingertips like with a typewriter, or is the action completely obscured form the user such as a furnace controlled by a remote thermostat? Perhaps is a middle ground, remote but visible, like a garage door opener.
Building upon the idea of cultural expectations for technology, the concept of proximity helps us further describe our interactions with tech. Light switches are usually found near doorways. We enter a room, find the switch, and the light turns on. This is an example of close proximity, it is immediately obvious that the action of the user caused the technology to respond. Many of us have experienced the frustration that arises when the proximity has been increased. I know in my house there are several light switches whose function remains a mystery. My action of flipping the switch is not rewarded with a response that is immediately visible.
Lights are an example of a common piece of tech that we are accustomed to having close proximity to. The same is true with doors, television remotes, hand tools, etc… HVAC technology is usually hidden out of sight. When we adjust the thermostat the machines come to life but they are often out of sight and provide no indication that they are functioning.
All of this and DEMS.
The goal of all this is to help Devise an experiential media system. By having an understanding of the rules we all play by when it comes to technology, we can begin to play with the rules. For example, what if a light switch played a honking sound when flipped instead of turning on a light? Or what would someone do if they turned a doorknob and a door several feet away opened instead? By taking the ideas of cultural expectations, the physical experience, and proximity and playing with expectations, many new possibilities emerge.
I can think of no greater example of this that the creation of Disneyland in 1955. The gates opened on July 17 and the world of immersive entertainment changed forever. (The opening day was an absolute disaster and I encourage you to read about it!) Guests were presented with technology and experiences that didn’t exist before, the rules had rewritten.
The above set of books served as a fascinating guide to the design and implementation of many attractions of the Disney parks and the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York. The goal was to sell tickets of course, but the means was by creating unique experiences that the world had never seen before. This required the invention of new technologies and concepts. One of the key problems to solve was how to get as many people as possible through the attractions as quickly as possible while also ensuring they had a good time.
Above is “It’s a Small World” from the 1964 Worlds Fair. The ride was designed and built for the Pepsi pavilion and featured small boats for guests to ride. This allowed for a large number of people to be cycled through the attraction at a steady pace.
A better example of how technology and proximity come together is in the Jungle Cruise ride. Above is a piece of concept art for the ride by Mark Davis. The Disney team had to figure out how to tell a narrative as quickly as possible without letting the guests actually interact with anything. Guests must “keep their hands and arms inside the ride at all times” to protect them, and the attractions, from harm. By necessity the tactile experience is removed and the proximity is fixed at a middle distance. Guests also only have a few moments to observe the various scenes before they move past them. By limiting the “scenes” to simple motions and exaggerated behaviors it was possible for riders to “get” the visual gag being shown to them.
In theme parks, shrinking the proximity of the attraction to the guests can have an extreme impact. Above is the Yeti from the Expedition Everest ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando. It is one of the largest animations ever made, over 25′ tall, and goes from remote proximity to uncomfortably close very quickly. Anamatronics were commonplace by the time this ride came to be, they were often of the mostly static variety as seen on the Jungle Cruise or the Haunted Mansion. Here designers used proximity to terrify people. As the riders raced past the yeti on a roller coaster the enormous machine would lunge and swipe at the riders, just barley missing them (from the riders perspective). This never before seen behavior terrified people and was a huge success! Unfortunately the technology at the time was not up to the task and the animatronic has been mostly static for years due to maintenance issues.
Historic DEMS
Another source of inspiration for Cycle 2 was the work, “Stained Glass” by Sonia Hilliday and Laure Lushington. They explore the history and styles of stained glass through the ages focusing mainly on Christian cathedrals. Disney may have invented theme park, but perhaps it was the church that created DEMS? (What counts as the first DEMS is certainly up for debate, but here I will cherry pick the cathedrals as a prime example of a DEMS.)
Above is Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, built 1241-1248. This is an outstanding example of a DEMS that takes into consideration proximity, the tactile experience, and cultural expectations. But first a little stage setting. Imagine you are visiting Paris in the 13th century, you have no idea what electricity is, or anything about technology more complex than a shovel, and you walk into that cathedral. It is the technological equivalent to a modern US Navy super-carrier. Every detail has been thought about and addressed. The smell of incense lingers in the air, a choir sings from an alcove, and everywhere is brilliant light. I imagine the experience would be like being hit with a metaphorical sledge hammer.
The physical experience is top notch in every respect. There are no cheap materials in this place, everything is solid wood, iron, and stone. The cultural part of the interaction is immense but I will not dive into that here. But what about proximity? Perhaps we are well to do and can get seats close to the altar for mass, the less well off sit further away. The monks and sisters are cloistered behind screens, preventing us from getting too close. What are we trying to gain proximity to in the first place? Proximity to the divine is the goal here. By utilizing the senses and cultural expectations the cathedral brings us closer to heaven. Proximity is not limited to physical distance in a DEMS.
Lets take a U-turn from the DEMS of the cathedral and visit medieval Kyoto, Japan. Above is Saihoji Temple, also known as the moss temple. Sophie Walker writes about such places in her excellent work, “The Japanese Garden.” If you ever want to write a book about Japanese gardens there is a rule you need to follow. For every one page about plants and the act of gardening, you must first write 40 pages about the human condition and its history.
What looks like a natural arrangement of plants and rocks, is actually a meticulously crafted DEMS. Every aspect of a Japanese garden has been done with great care and thought. Every rock, every plant, or absence of plants, has been painstakingly planed out and executed with the upmost care. Like the cathedral the physical experience is top notch, all natural in this case, but we can expect stone and untreated wood in addition to the plants. The technology in the garden is hidden and deceptive. Below is a prime example of this. We see a simple path. Like the lights switch we all know how to step from stone to stone, but take a closer look. The stones are of uneven size and shape and do not lie in a straight line. To keep from tripping guests must walk slowly with care, paying careful attention to their footing. However, in the intersection there is a much larger flat stone. The designer of this path deliberately placed every stone knowing that when the guest got to the flat spot they would stop and take a better look at their surroundings. If there is a “best place” to view this area of the garden, it is form that stone. Using proximity and the careful control of what a guest can see and what is obscured is the technology at play here.
Another important concept from the Japanese garden is the simple technology of a gate. A gate is a physical barrier that dictates our access to something. Below we can see a garden path with a gate preventing access to what I presume is a tea house. Lets abstract the idea of a gate to a more metaphorical idea, lets think of gates as thresholds or transitions. In the garden, gates, either real or implied, are opportunities to transition our thoughts and emotions. The cultural purpose of these gates is to reduce our proximity to zero, we are invited to engage in self reflection. In the image below the idea is that to pass the threshold, here represented by a physical gate, the guest must leave something behind. It could be some worry, worldly desire, etc… The technology is extremely subtle, but equal in power to the cathedral.
TO BE CONTINUED
Cycle 1
Posted: December 9, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
Your adventure begins at the mailbox. You go to check your mail and find a large packing envelope inside addressed to you from an unfamiliar sender. Unlike the normal unexpected junk mail, this particular piece has been prepared with great care. The writing on the outside is in an elegant script and bears the mysterious symbol (above image). You take the envelope inside to open it.
There are three smaller envelopes inside, the most striking is made of dark blue paper with gold trim bearing a wax seal. A plane manila envelope has “Open Second” on the outside and is also wax sealed. Lastly is a ordinary white envelop with “Open Third” written on the front. You open the blue envelope first. After breaking the seal a letter is revealed inside.
Someone named The Curator is inviting you to attend a gathering of fellow explorers and adventurers known as the Order of the Veiled Compass. There is no return address, only a set of geographic coordinates, a time, and a date. (There was a mistake made in the coordinates, they take you to a random field in Springfield, Ohio. Ooops.)
The second envelope contains a letter and a slip of paper covered in numbers. Someone calling themselves Mungas, the keeper of keys, provides a little more information about the society and that there are apparently some sort of tests involved.
Feeling a little confused you take another look at the first letter and notice small writing along the rear edge of the letter.
The second letter has a corresponding set of numbers. When placed next to each other the letters and markings line up to create a cypher.
By combining the two letters and the slip of paper covered in letters, a message emerges.
With the puzzle solved you shift your attention to the third envelope. Inside is a printed message from the hosts of a party you are invited to. The letter explains that a themed party is being held and that you are instructed to create a character to play. The mysterious Curator has noticed the scientific, artistic, or adventurist activities of your character and has deemed them acceptable to join the Order of the Veiled Compass. A society dedicated to the discovery and preservation of the worlds arts, cultures, sciences, etc… The setting is an alternative Victorian history where the adventurous spirit of the age is highlighted while suppressing the ills of conquest and colonialism. The letter describes that is appropriate to explore and celebrate different cultures, but it is not acceptable to promote stereotypes or be disrespectful. Also, unlike the real Victorian settings, here there is room for magic, the occult, and other fantastic ideas. You are also given the address of where to go.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The experience described above tells the tale of what happened in the motion lab for my presentation of Cycle 1. The documents shown are prototypes for an immersive my wife and I have been creating in out home. Basically the two of us asked ourselves, “wouldn’t it be really neat to live in a scooby-doo house? Filled with secret passages, hidden treasures, and mysterious artifacts?” We have spent the past few years turning the interior of the house into a combination that is 20% Disney’s Haunted Mansion (the ride), 20% the Explorers Club, 20% Hogwarts, and 40% the British Museum London. It’s still very much a work in progress, but we have made significant progress. Below are a few photos of the place.
Not shown, but started, are the tracks and mechanisms that will support hidden doors that guests must figure out how to open. Guests must solve puzzles to gain access to various parts of the home. This was simulated in the motion lab by having the participants play a Dungeons & Dragons style RPG where they each moved their character around the house to solve several puzzles.
The presentation was both fun and insightful. Watching the “players” complete the puzzles and interact with the imaginary version of the house provided valuable insight into how the experience can be tuned to make the overall experience better. In particular the decoding puzzle in the letters needs work. The idea is sound, but the hidden message needs to be rethought to something more meaningful. The goal was that the secret message would tell the guests how to open the first secret door in the house. Much was lost in the translation from idea to the tabletop rpg, but it was clear that the future door opening mechanism and the message describing it need more thought.
Everyone had a good time and enjoyed the experience. It was a lot of fun to create the paper props that will act as the first experience guests have with the overall event.
Pressure Project 3
Posted: December 8, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Make a MakeyMakey
Pressure Project 3 asked us to incorporate a MakeyMakey with Isadora to create something that a user could interact with via a non keyboard/mouse interface. I ran into a serious issue with the assignment as I did not have a MakeyMakey to work with! I was not in class the day they were handed out, and I didn’t have the ability to get one before the assignment was due. However, I am a freshly minted Electrical Engineer from OSU, so I decided to come up with an alternative.
First, lets talk about electricity. Electricity at it’s most basic is simply the movement of electrons from a source of high potential (voltage) to a lower potential (ground). (This is actually not entirely accurate and we can blame Ben Franklin for the error! But it works for our purposes.) The red arrow in the image below shows the flow electrons, also referred to as a current. The electrons with high charge want to get to ground, but there are a few things in their way. First is a resistor (the 1MΊ) which acts to resist the flow of electrons, they can’t move through it very fast. The 1M here is for 1 mega-ohm, a very large value for a resistor. The electrons do flow through the resistor but then run into a capacitor (the two parallel lines). A capacitor is a simple device, two metal plates that are very close to each other but not actually toughing. Here the electrons pile up on one side of the capacitor, they can’t actually get to ground. After a short moment enough electrons have made it through the resistor to cause the voltage at the capacitor to reach the same value as the power source. The key thing to know is that at rest the system is in a state where the voltage at the touch point is equal to that of the voltage source.
The MakeyMakey is constantly looking at the value of the voltage present on the charged side of the capacitor. But what if that voltage was to suddenly change? A sudden drop in voltage can be read by the MakeyMakey and recognized as a user input. Humans are good at carrying charge! When you shock yourself on a doorknob you are experiencing the transfer of charge from a high potential (you) to a lower potential (the door). The same thing happens here, when a person touches the wire connected to the MakeyMakey all the charge that was happily sitting in the capacitor suddenly sees a new place to go, into the user! All that charge rushes out of the system, and thanks to the resistor the power source can’t supply replacement electrons fast enough to maintain the voltage on the capacitor. Thus the MakeyMakey recognizes a voltage drop and triggers its output into the connected computer.
Above is my version of the MakeyMakey. The blue rectangle is an Arduino Leonardo and is responsible for running the program that makes the whole thing work. Key to this is that the Leonardo, unlike its other Arduino cousins, has a built in USB host, meaning it can natively act as a keyboard and mouse. The Arduino is supplying 5 volts of power to four pairs of resistors and capacitors as shown in the schematic above. The resistors are the skinny blue pieces and the capacitors are the round yellow bumps. The wires coming off towards the front are the sense points. The green wire connected to the back of a button is the ground.
Above is a section of the code that makes the whole thing work. First the Arduino is told that it has four inputs, A0-A3. Next these inputs must be calibrated. The analog inputs that are constantly measuring the voltage of the capacitors see values that are continuously changing. Electrons really want to be at the lowest potential possible and are very good at doing so, this causes the inputs to the MakeyMakey to be a little unstable. The CalibrateInput function measures the input value several times and computes the average of the readings, this becomes the “default” value of each input. The DetectTouch function looks at each input and records its current state. The current state is compared to the calibration value, and if the difference is greater than 100 it is interpreted as a user input. The value of 100 is known as the “Threshold” and acts to prevent false positives. It allows for a little change in state without triggering a response. The value can be adjusted to regulate the sensitivity of the inputs. Finally, if an input has been detected a corresponding keystroke is passed to the host computer.
MakeyMakey Make it happen! Having solved my issue of not having a MakeyMakey it was time to connect it to Isadora. Keyboard Watcher Actors were configured to look for the keys W, A, S, D. Each input controlled a different part of the silly face shown. Touching the wires would turn on or off the black and yellow circles.
During the presentation a disaster occurred! All the USB-C cables we could find in the motion lab wouldn’t make my Arduino work! It was dead in the water without whatever magic cable I had left on my desk. Luckily I chose to use the same letters as the official MakeyMakey so it was easy to swap my contraption for the real thing. Isadora couldn’t tell the difference and the scene behaved as expected.
The MakeyMakey is truly an amazing piece of tech! It provides a fantastic means of exploring unusual interfaces for Isadora, games, or whatever the user can think of. However, building one from scratch opens up additional possibilities. Having access to both the code and the hardware allows for greater flexibility in operation. For example, my diy version is has much greater sensitivity. The MakeyMakey is unreliable at best if the user is not in constant contact with the ground wire. My diy version does not have this restriction, it can detect the change in charge state without the need for the user to be holding the ground. This behavior can be additionally controlled with the Threshold setting. Increasing the minimum change is state high enough results in the user having to be in contact with ground to ensure a large enough voltage drop across the capacitor. Or, if tuned the other direction, the sensor becomes more responsive to light touches. It is my intention to continue working on this project for Cycle 3 with the goal being to detect the presence of a person without them being aware of it.
Pressure Project 2
Posted: November 13, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Chomper by the Numbers
For PP2 we were tasked of observing instances of people interacting with something that could be considered, even remotely, technological. I chose the east entrance to Oxley’s Cafe near Dreese Labs on campus.
This particular entrance has a set of doors, one of which is slightly smarter than the other, it opens on it’s own when pushed or pulled.
The door is also placed in an extremely high traffic area. During peek hours, around lunch, there is a constant flow of people passing through or past this set of doors.
Taking inspiration from a classmate I paid close attention to exactly how people interact with the doors. This was an worthwhile effort and I learned a lot. It is easy enough to say “people open doors.” However, there is room for more detail! Which hand do they use, to the come to a stop or do they remain in motion, do they step backwards, etc… It turns out that by closely observing how people interacted with the doors several patterns emerged.
The same idea can be applied to people leaving the cafe.
But we must remember, this door has some smarts! The mechanism that opens, and holds open, the door adds significant resistance to the action of opening. It was clearly observed that this extra weight caused people passing through the door to experience something unexpected.
The most interesting observation was related tot he doors behavior of holding itself opening. There is no indication of when the timer runs out, leading some people to pass through without needing to touch the door, while the unfortunate few get chomped.
The Pressure Project also asked us to think of ways the interaction could be improved, or made worse.
The project was an excellent experience for taking a deep dive into an everyday occurrence, and finding new information there. I don’t spend much thought on observing how I move my own body, or how others move theirs. The simple act of paying attention to what it takes to open a door was eye opening. In particular, the seamless way the human wrist, arm, and shoulder work together to achieve the act of opening a door is highly complex. The key takeaway from PP3 is that when designing an immersive experience, in particular an interactive one, careful attention must be paid to every aspect of how a user interacts with a system.
Pressure Project 2: Japanese Sign
Posted: October 18, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project Leave a comment »As soon as I heard the requirements for this pressure project, I immediately knew I wanted to use a livestream. Not because I didn’t want to physically observe people in the real world, but because a livestream allowed me to go anywhere in the world. This seemed like a great idea, until I started looking for livestreams. I actually found a playlist of Japanese livestreams on YouTube and as I was going through them I realized one major flaw: there really weren’t many interactive systems to observe.
There was a famous livestream of a major Tokyo intersection, but this seemed too unpersonal and generic. A smaller intersection, while more personal, was still just as generic. Although as a note, barely anyone ever jaywalked in the streams I watched, even when there were clearly no cars at all. I ended up going with a stream of people walking down a street. There were shops, restaurants, many signs, and it all looked very… Japanese. I chose this one because, on top of looking very characteristic for Japan, there was a sign in a great location for observing. Additionally, I watched from 12-1pm (their time) so there was a lot of activity happening. See below for the sign in a screenshot of the livestream.
What made this sign a good candidate to observe though? Firstly, as I said above, it’s framed in a way where you can tell when people interact with the sign. Many of the other signs aren’t on street level, and sense we can’t see the exact location people’s eyes are looking, you can’t tell which sign they are looking at. The sign being on the ground makes it very clear when people look at it. Next, although you can’t really tell in the screenshot, this sign has lights around it that flash in a particular way. This was the “system” what people would interact with. Below is a mockup of exactly what the flashing light pattern looked like:
Now you may be thinking, is this really an interactive system? Perhaps it’s a bit of a stretch but first let’s cover how people interacted with this sign and signs in general. In my opinion, there are four key interactions:
Interaction #1:
A person doesn’t even see the sign. This is the worst case scenario. Either our potential observer was too busy looking at their phone or was in a rush to get through the street who knows, but in the end our sign made no influence on them at all… đ
Interaction #2:
A person sees the sign but doesn’t look. This is what I believe to be the most common interaction. I know I said the first type of interaction was worst case scenario, but in a way this one feels worse. People could tell there was a sign there, maybe even glanced at it to see what it was, but the sign’s existence was so ambivalent to them they simply didn’t care to look further.
Interaction #3:
A person sees and processes what is going on with the sign but does not stop walking. This is a great improvement over the first two interactions. People become so interested in the sign that they become curious of what it is. This interaction comes in a range but has an ideal scenario: the head turn. If someone turned their head to read the sign, that means it was so interesting to them, that up until the point where they physically could not see the sign anymore, they were still looking. There is room for improvement here though, as these people still walked by the sign when the time came.
Interaction #4:
A person stops to look at the sign. This is the best case scenario. A person was so interested in the sign, that whatever reason they were walking for become overridden. They must learn more about this sign. This is the only acceptable scenario. I will now redesign the sign to accomplish this goal… đ
Simple Changes
Assuming we want to keep things tame with the changes, let’s focus on the lights before adding new components.
Possible Change #1:
Make the light pattern more coherent and interesting. In the mock-up above, you can see the light pattern may vaguely be in a clockwise pattern, but adding more states and making it a clearly clockwise pattern could make people more likely to look, if just to see the pattern.
Possible Change #2:
Add more colors. A pattern of on/off is alright, but a pattern of different colors is definitely more likely to get people’s attention. This also adds an entire new layer to the lights, and that added complexity could keep people’s gaze longer.
Possible Change #3:
Make the pattern flashy. If the pattern has many lights on and then off in quick succession, people may be more likely to look. Especially someone who isn’t really paying attention as a sudden burst of activity may steal their focus.
Intense Changes
The simple changes are largely superficial. While they may get people to look more often and for longer, they’re less likely to get people to stop, which of course is the only goal that matters.
Possible Change #4:
Add many varied colorful and random patterns. The idea here is that there are just so many crazy lights and patterns and flashes occurring that people can’t possibly understand everything happening in the time it takes to walk down the street. People will have to stop in order to get the full pattern, if there even is one.
Possible Change #5:
Added speakers and proximity detectors to the sign. A speaker that just makes noise could get people to glance over, but if the audio is proximity based and makes noise depending on people’s distance to the sign, the personal aspect is more likely to get people to actually stop. The sign could say things like “Look at me!” or “You there, stop immediately!” in reaction to someone getting close to the sign and in many scenarios that person will stop.
Possible Change #6:
Makes the lights extremely bright. Now maybe this could have the opposite effect as people can’t look at the something that’s too bright because it hurts, but a light that is extraordinarily bright could cause people to stop in surprise. Although again looking away is not ideal, even if they stop.
Stop Them No Matter What
It’s still possible that the above changes won’t stop people. But what can we do to ensure that people stop no matter what?
Possible Change #7:
Add a fake crowd of people in front of the sign. It should really look like everyone wants to see this sign. How could anyone walking down the street resist the intrigue of what they could be looking at? They may even join the crowd and then strengthen its attraction towards other people…
Possible Change #8:
Add a piece of currency on the ground in front of the sign that is on a string. When people try to grab the money, the sign retracts it back into itself. The act of having to bed down and ground the string will stop someone, and then after they are stopped, they’ll likely look at the sign either in intrigue or confusion.
Possible Change #9:
All other changes have a chance of failure. In this change, a motorized system is added to the sign’s wheels that allow it to move back and forth freely. A motion detector tracks people’s movement and moves the sign to block people’s path so they physically must stop and look at the sign. This is the ultimate solution. I suggest all sign manufacturers invest immediately!
After presenting, the class discussed a few things that are worth noting. It was questioned if people are really “interacting with an automated computer system” by simply looking at a sign, however the changes I made, especially ones related to proximity, easily bring the system as a whole up to that specification. In terms of a less invasion approach, proximity lights were brought up as a possible idea. I kind of had moved this idea to the audio but it could easily work with lights as well. For example, maybe the color changes depending on your distance to the sign or maybe more and more lights turn on the closer you get. Either of these could definitely get a person to stop, especially if they notice that they are the ones controlling the lights.
This was definitely a fun project. I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t find something more interesting in a livestream, but I was satisfied with how I was able to spin something extremely simple into something a bit more complex.
Pressure Project 1: Bouncing Idle Screen
Posted: October 15, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Isadora, Pressure Project Leave a comment »The idea for this pressure project came to me based on the “achievements” that Alex gave us to work towards. At first I was concerned about how I could possibly keep an audience engaged for over 30 seconds with something non-interactive. But then I thought about something completely noninteractive that does keep people engaged, and that’s the DVD bouncing idle screen. I specifically remember doing this myself whenever I saw it, but I knew other people liked doing it too from seeing it in internet memes or referenced in pop culture. This idea seemed perfect as it could definitely be done within Isadora.
The only issue was that it didn’t feel like it would be enough work for 5 hours. I then decided that because this idle screen plays on a TV, I could simulate someone changing channels. My first thoughts for other channels were full static and the color bars as obviously I can’t animate anything too complex (although maybe a live feed camera could have worked…). This was when I started creating the project in Isadora.
The first thing I made was the TV. I wanted an actual TV to be visible instead of just using the edges of the stage because it looks nicer but also because it just makes it feel more authentic. I also wanted it to be in the classic 4:3 resolution that old CRT TVs had. Another aspect of these older TVs that I wanted to emulate was the curved corners of the screen (technically the entire screen is bulging out but this is a 2D representation). With that plan in mind, I created the first TV with two boxes: the outer TV casing and the screen. I made the outer casing a darkish grey hue and the screen was a sort of dark grey/green thing that I associate with turned-off TVs of this type (the screen also has a thick black border so the entire thing doesn’t go from outer casing to the screen). The first issue came with adding the curved corners of the screen. The best way I could figure out how to do this was to use a shape with odd insets as that was the closest thing to a negative space curve. The issue with this however, was that it couldn’t be layered under border while on top of the screen, as those were both being represented by a single square. See below:
To solve this, I recreated the border casing as 4 individual rectangles so that the layering would allow the corner shape to be on top of the screen and under the border. The also allowed the entire TV itself to have softer edges as the rectangles ended up not perfectly flush. The TV was also made into a user actor where the color of the screen was controllable. The completed turned-off TV is below:
Next was to make the main attraction: the bouncing idle screen. The first thing I did was create a default white square. I used two wave generators for its vertical and horizontal position, with the wave generators in triangle mode as the movements should constant the entire time. To my surprise, this immediately worked in making the square bounce around the screen exactly as I wanted, the only exception is that it was bouncing around the borders of the entire stage. After some scaling and position subtracting (mostly done through trial and error) the square correctly bounced within the TV.
Now that I have something bouncing, it’s time to make that thing change colors every time it hits as edge. I did this by using an inside range actor connected to the wave generators. Every time the wave generators left the range of 0.5 – 99.5 it sent out a signal. This perfectly corresponds to when the shape bounces off a wall. I then connecting this signal to three random actors and connected those to a color maker RGBA actor’s red, green, and blue values to generator a random color for the shape. Now every time the square bounces off a wall, it also changes color.
The final thing I needed to do was replace the default square shape with something else. I didn’t want to recreate the original exactly, so I replaced the “DVD” text with “ACCAD” and just put a small empty oval underneath it similar to the original. I turned this into a user actor to simplify the views and after a few more operations it looked great. See below:
I was extremely happy with how this turned out, but I still needed a bit more to complete the project. The next thing I created was the static screen. At first I wanted it to be as accurate as possible by having a large number of shapes act as pixels, but this quickly showed to be not possible. At one point I had over a hundred little “pixels” that would get a random black and white color and position in the screen but the lag this caused was too great to continue. Not to mention the fact that it looked horrible! I then briefly thought about using several images of static screen and cycling between them, but I couldn’t remember how to display and swap images and this seemed like the easy approach any way. I ended up using a couple dozen large “pixels” to simulate a sort of static. By coincidence, they ended up in a similar pattern to how the color bars looked and so I was satisfied enough. The squares simply get a random black and white color in a pretty fast frequency. See below:
The last screen I made was the color bars. This was very simple as it was just static colors, although getting the exact correct positions was a little annoying sometimes.
Finally, I decided to simulate the TV turning off as it felt like a pretty iconic old TV action and a satisfying conclusion. For this animation, I used two wave generators set to sawtooth and to only play once. One wave generator squishes a big white square vertically into a line, and then the other squishes it horizontally until it’s gone. The end result was surprisingly satisfying! See below for the color screen into turning off:
Now that I had all the scenes complete, I needed to link them together. For the idle screen, I decided to start a counter for the number of times it bounces off the top or bottom wall. After 20 bounces it switches to static. For both static and the color bars I simply had a pulse generator activating a counter to switch after an amount of pulses. There was probably a better way to do this, but I was running out of time and there was one more thing I wanted to do.
The very last thing I added was channel text to the corners of the static and color bar scenes. This would further signify that this was a TV the viewer was looking at. Ideally, this would be solid and then slowly fade away, but given the time crunch it was just a very slow constant fade. Because these scenes only play briefly, it isn’t too noticeable.
The complete (although slightly shortened) result can be seen below:
The feedback I received on this project was amazing! I seemed like everyone made at least some noise while it was playing. One person said they were getting physically engaged in the idle bounces. Some people didn’t realize it was a TV until it changed channels which actually surprised me as it seemed obvious given the context of the idle bouncing. I hadn’t thought about how someone who wasn’t completely familiar with it wouldn’t know what was happening or what the border was supposed to represent. I was extremely happy when someone pointed out the curved corners of the screen as I thought nobody would even notice or care about it. There were also feelings of nostalgia and anticipation among the viewers as well.
This pressure project was a ton of fun! Isadora is just a blast to create things with and pushing its capabilities is something I loved exploring. If I had more time, I definitely could have done a lot more with this project, but I’m looking forward to creating more interactive experiences in future projects!
PP1- randomness and dark humor
Posted: September 25, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »The day our Pressure Project 1 was assigned, I was immediately excited about the possibilities waiting for me in the process of the endeavor to achieve making someone laugh. We had 15 minutes of class left and I began working on the patch. My first thought was to create ‘a body’ through the shapes actors, and have something happen to that body that was absurd. As I was creating the shapes, I began changing the fill colors. The first color I tried was blue, and that made me think of making the body drink water, get full of water, and something with that water happens that creates some type of burst.
While I liked the idea at the moment, it wasn’t funny enough for me. After I sat down to work on it longer, I recreated my ‘body’ and stared at it for some time. I wanted to make it come alive by giving it thoughts and feelings beyond actions. I knew I had to have some randomness to what I was doing for the random actor to make sense to me.
So I turned inward. My MFA research is utilizing somatic sensations as a resource for creative expression through a queer lens. The inward-outward contrast, alignments and misalignments are exciting for me. I enjoy training my mind to look at things in non-normative ways, as both a queer and a neurodivergent artist. While I have a lot of coherent thoughts relative to the situations, I sometimes have hyperfixations or interest in random stuff many people might not think of thinking.
I wanted my Isadora ‘body’ to be hyperfixated on magic potions. I wanted it to be consumed by the thought of magic potions that led to some sort of absurd outcome, hence the randomness. I searched for magic potion images with .png extensions and found one that I would like to use. After adding that image, I needed a ‘hand’ to interact with the potion. So I searched for a .png image of a hand.
To help my ‘body’ convey its inner experiences, I decided to give it a voice through the text draw actor and included short captions to my scenes. The next part was giving my magic potion a storyline to have two characters in my story. I achieved that through showing how the magi potion affected the body beyond the body’s initiated actions. Carrying the magic potion from a passive role to an active role.
I connected a wave generator the magic potion’s width that created a spinning visual and connected another wave generator to the head’s intensity that created a sense of lightheadedness/dizziness or some type of feeling funny/not normal.
In the next scene, the head of my body disintegrates after consuming the magic potion. I achieved that with an explode actor.
To exeggarete the explosion and the effect of the magic potion on the person, I connected a random actor to the explode actor and connected a pulse generator to the random actor.
The last scene reveals the dark truth of the story, using humor. The body disappears and the only thing on the scene is the magic potion with its inner voice (through text draw) for the first time. I needed to give a facial expression to my magic potion so I searched for a .png image of a smiley face that I could layer on top of the previous image. After finding the image I liked, I looked at my scenes and found myself laughing alone in my room. That’s when I decided my work on this project has been satisfactory on my end and I stayed within the 5 hour limit we had to work on it.
In my presentation, everything went according to plan on my end. And the expected achievement of making someone laugh was achieved as I heard people making noises in reaction to the scenes, especially the final scene.
There was a feedback on the scale of images. I worked on it on my personal computer and presented on the big screen in the Motion Lab. Because I didn’t project this there before, the images were very big especially given the proximity of the audience to the screen. But I received the feedback that due to the texts not being long and readable both in attention span and timewise, it still worked.
I am quite content with how the process went and how the product ended up. Having used Isadora in previous classes, building on my skills is very exciting to me. I usually don’t use humor in my artistic works, but I had a craving for it. With the goal of making someone laugh, using Isadora as a canvas or a ‘stage’ for storytelling and connecting beyond the ‘cool’ capabilities of the software was the part I enjoyed the most in this process.
Pressure Project 1 – The best intentions….
Posted: September 21, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: PP1 Leave a comment »I would like to take a moment and marvel that a product like Isadora exists. That we can download some software, and within a few hours create something involving motion capture and video manipulation, is simply mind blowing. However, I learned that Isadora makes it very easy to play with toys without fully understanding them.
The Idea
When we were introduced to the Motion Lab we connected our computers into the “magic USB” and were able to access the rooms cameras, projectors, etc… I picked a camera to test and randomly chose what turned out to be the ceiling mounted unit. I’m not sure where the inspiration came from, but I decided right then that I wanted to use that camera to make a Pac-Man like game where the user would capture ghosts by walking around on a projected game board.
The idea evolved into what I was internally calling the “Fish Chomp” game. The user would take on the role of an angler-fish (the one with the light bulb hanging in front of it). The user would have a light that, if red, would cause projected fishes to flee, or if blue, would cause the fish to come closer. With a red light the user could “chomp” a fish by running into it. When all the fish were gone a new fish would appear that ignored the users light and always tried to chase them, a much bigger fish would try to chomp the user. With the user successfully chomped, the game would reset.
How to eat a big fish? One bite at a time.
To turn my idea into reality it was necessary to identify the key components needed to make the program work. Isadora needed to identify the user and track its location, generate objects that the user could interact with, process collisions between the user and the objects, and process what happens when all the objects have been chomped.
User Tracking:
The location of the user was achieved by passing a camera input through a chroma key actor. The intention was that by removing all other objects in the image the eyes actor would have an easier time of identifying the user. The hope was that the chroma key would reliably identify the red light held by the user. The filtered video was then passed to the eyes++ actor and its associated blob decoder. Together these actors produced the XY location of the user. The location was processed by Limit-Scale actors to convert the blob output to match the projector resolution. The resolution of the projector would determine how all objects in the game interacted, so this value was set as a Global Value that all actors would reference. Likewise, the location of the user was passed to other actors via Global Values.
Fish Generation:
The fish utilized simple shape actors with the intention of replacing them with images of fish at a later time (unrealized). The fish actor utilized wave generators to manipulate the XY position of the shape, with wither the X or Y generator updated with a random number that would periodically change the speed of the fish.
Chomped?
Each fish actor contained within it a user actor to process collisions with the user. The actor received the user location and the shape position, subtracted their values form each other, and compared the ABS of the result to a definable âkill radiusâ to determine if the user got a fish. It would be too difficult for the user to chomp a fish if there locations had to be an exact pixel match, so a comparator was used to compare the difference in location to an adjustable radius received form a global variable. When the user and a fish were âclose enoughâ together, set by the kill radius, the actor would output TRUE, indicating a successful collision. A successful chomp would trigger the shape actor to stop projecting the fish.
Keeping the fish dead:
The user and the fish would occupy the same space only briefly, causing the shape to reappear after their locations diverged again. To avoid the fish from coming back to life, they needed memory to remember that they got chomped. To accomplish this, logic actors were used to construct a SR AND-OR Latch. (More info about how they work can be found here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip-flop_(electronics) .) This actor, when triggered at its âSâ input, causes the output to go HIGH, and critically, the output will not change once triggered. When the collision detection actor recognized a chomp, it would trigger the latch, thus killing the fish.
All the fish in a bowl:
The experience consisted of the users and four fish actors. For testing purposes the user location could be projected as a red circle. The four fish actors projected their corresponding shapes until chomped. When all four fish actors latches indicated that all the fish were gone, a 4-inpur AND gate would trigger a scene change.
We need a bigger fish!
When all the fish were chomped, the scene would change. First, an ominous pair of giant eyes would appear, followed by the eyes turning angry with the addition of some fangs.
The intention was for the user to go from being the chomper to being the chomped! A new fish would appear that would chase the user until a collision occurred. Once this occurred, the scene would change again to a game over screen.
The magic wand:
To give the user something to interact with, and for the EYES++ actor to track, a flashlight was modified with a piece of red gel and a plastic bubble to make a glowing ball of light.
My fish got fried.
The presentation did not go as intended. First, I forgot that the motion lab ceiling webcam was an NDI input, not a simple USB connection like my test setup at home. I decided to forgo the ceiling camera and demo the project on the main screen in the lab while using my personal webcam as the input. This meant that I had to demo the game instead of handing the wand to a classmate as intended. This was for the best as the system was very unreliable. The fish worked as intended, but the user location system was too inconsistent to provide a smooth experience.
It took a while, but eventually I managed to chomp all the fish. The logic worked as intended, but the scene change to the Big Fish eyes ignored all of the timing I put into the transition. Instead of taking several seconds to show the eyes, it jumped straight to the game over scene. Why this occurred remains a mystery as the scenes successfully transitioned upon a second attempt.
Fish bones
In spite of my egregious interpretation of what counted as â5 hoursâ of project work, I left many ambitions undone. Getting the Big Fish to chase the user, using images of fish instead of shapes, making the fish swim away or towards the user, and the ideas of adding sound effects were discarded like the bones of a fish. I simply ran out of time.
Although the final presentation was a shell of what I intended, I learned a lot about Isadora and what it is capable of doing and consider the project an overall success.
Fishing for compliments.
My classmates had excellent feedback after witnessing my creation. What surprised me the most was how my project ended up as a piece of performance-art. Because of the interactive nature of the project I became part of the show! In particular, my personal anxiousness stemming from the presentation not going as planed played as much a part of the show as Isadora. Much of the feedback was very positive with praise being given for the concept, the simple visuals, and the use of the flashlight to connect the user to the simulation in a tangible way. I am grateful for the positive reception from the class.
Bumping Alisha’s post
Posted: August 28, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »
Reading Alisha Jihn’s Cycle 3: PALIMPSEST post and viewing the accompanying videos was insightful. It provided a clear example of how projections can be used in a concert dance context. Iâve encountered Alishaâs work before, both in movement and technology, and seeing her process, her iterations, questions, and curiosities resonated with me.
Her approach reminded me that stepping away from a piece and returning to it later can offer fresh eyes and new ideas. It also reinforced the idea that just because I can add more to a work doesnât mean I should. Sometimes, subtraction can be more effective than addition.
Bumping Old Discussion
Posted: August 26, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »I found Peter’s pressure project utilizing an Arduino to be an interesting idea. Using the microcontroler as a means for creating unusual interfaces is a fantastic idea. He mentions that the hardware caused things to change “on screen”, which is particularly fascinating. I assume that the Arduino was providing input to some other application that processed the audio/video aspect of the project. I’m curious if in addition to what was described, can the Arduino also receive information from the A/V application while also serving as an input device? For example, could touching the fruit controllers also cause lights or motors to activate based on instructions form the computer controlling everything?