Final Project
Posted: December 14, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »For my final project I wanted to create an experience that was playful, interactive, tricky , and physically engaging. Thus, a life-size version of candy land emerged on my Isadora patch. Though I had a loose idea of how I envisioned the game to function when I began the project, it quickly grew beyond my original construct in to something far more complex.
The game begins with the players “picking a card” by pressing a button on a wii remote. The button then sends an osc message to my patch that triggers a random colored dot. This colored dot is then projected on to the main screen, signaling the player to move forward to that color dot.
I used a random number generator actor to pick a number to land in one of 12 inside range actors. Each of the 12 inside range actors either activated a shapes actor to project a colored dot on the screen or a jump actor to jump to a “special card”.
The special cards I chose to incorporate were the licorice card (freeze for one turn), the lollypop woods card (travel to the spiraling shape on the game board), the chocolate swamp(return to the start of the board game), and my personal favorite, the gooey gumdrop card.
The gooey gumdrop card instructed the player to pick up a wand and tap the gooey gumdrops in the snow below. This section of the game allowed me to incorporate my new comfortability with makey makeys. I created the gumdrops and the wand from aluminum foil and then painted them to fit the scene. I think this card added an element of adrenaline to the game and a higher level of physicality because the players had to find the gumdrops, bend to their level to tap them, and get them all before time ran out.
Like all projects, a few challenges arose in creating my Isadora patch. However, I was able to workshop the issues and within the problem solving I realized how much my Isadora competency has grown over the semester. I feel very comfortable with the program and I am proud of the logic I have grasped.
As a whole, I think that all of the players enjoyed themselves and had a fun time reconnecting with this childhood classic board game. I had a blast creating it and would love to recreate more board games in the future.
Pressure Project 3
Posted: November 4, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Our third pressure project included these guidelines:
-Create a 3 minute experience
-user must touch something apart from the keyboard and receive a response
-Must include sound
-User must move in a large environment and a hidden mystery must be revealed
Though I tried to meet all guidelines, I based my experience off of the guidelines “user must touch something apart from the keyboard and receive a response” and “User must move in a large environment”. I wanted to encourage a physicality and adrenaline in the user experience. Inspired by simple video games, I created a game in which the user walked on a path made of aluminum foil and attempted to tag bananas to earn points.
The objectives of the game were as follows: Keep contact with the path, touch all bananas, beat the clock! Level 2 included the user performing these tasks backwards.
I intentionally placed the bananas far from the designated path so the user would have to stretch and reach to earn the points. Additionally, I included an element of time so that the user would have a sense of urgency in his or her movement. I was very curious about the human embodiment of a game that was inspired by a 2-D experience I played as a child.
As a whole, the experience was a fun time for everyone involved. I enjoyed watching the users try and beat the tasks and I think the users had a fun time playing the ridiculous game. My colleagues explained that this experience felt most like a game and that they felt a strong urgency to win.
Though it was a fun time for everyone involved, difficulties definitely arose in the system set-up(see video footage below). The path kept detaching from the floor and caused users to have to start over for no reason. Looking back on it, I should have taped the path to the floor so it wouldn’t move around as much. I practiced the game on carpet and didn’t take in to account the environment in which we would be playing it.
I really enjoyed this project and it definitely inspired certain elements of my final project game I am constructing!
Pressure Project #2
Posted: October 5, 2018 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »For Pressure Project #2 we were assigned to create an automated fortune-telling machine utilizing any medium we felt comfortable with. I, still in the learning stages of Isadora, decided to use this platform to explore and develop. I had many goals for this project in order to challenge myself intellectually and artistically. My main goal of the project was not just to create t a functioning and responding system, but rather, a complex sensory experience that created a deliberate atmosphere. Naturally, I went with a 50s-esk carnival theme. I portrayed this theme through old film clips of San Francisco and a creepy sound scape that played throughout the user experience. My colleagues commented that they enjoyed these features of the system because it enhanced the mood of the experience and created a curious atmosphere.
I also wanted the computer fortune-teller to be tricky, clever, and mysterious. I tried to create a character within the system for the user to engage with. I did this by providing ambiguous instructions that could be interpreted many ways. I was curious to see if the user would be able to solve the riddles presented to them in order to receive their fortune. I also threw in some patterns that I hoped the user would eventually catch on to. My last goal was to utilize a wide range of triggers to keep the system moving forward. I used mouse watcher triggers, keyboard triggers, and voice and motion triggers intermittently throughout the system. The vocal triggers were the hardest to manage because every person has a clap or a snap of a different volume level. With this in mind, I made a pretty large inside range to catch a sound trigger. However, this caused my computer to sometimes pick up sounds that were unintentional. Or an intentional sound still didn’t fit within the inside range I allocated. This is still an area I need a lot of work in!
Every person who tried the system had a different experience. Some users immediately caught on to the patterns and loose instructions and others took longer to recognize that they were in a loop before they were able to get themselves to the next phase of the system. It was also interesting to use the devise in a group setting. When the people watching figured out the tricks of the system they experienced the uneasy feeling of keeping a secret to not ruin it for the user or future users. This uneasiness added to the overall mood of the system.
I really enjoyed this pressure project and am looking forward to how I can expand some of these goals in to my future work in the class and beyond!
PP1
Posted: September 20, 2018 Filed under: Assignments, Uncategorized Leave a comment »For my first pressure project I chose to tell the story of The Jungle Book in just over a minute. I created a sound score from audio clips of a nostalgic tape-recording of the classic Disney tale. After assembling the sound score, I gathered some visuals from the VHS 1967 film. From there, I decided to assemble the audio and visual clips using Isadora. I used Isadora so I could project multiple videos at once and animate the projections. I also wanted to become more proficient at the program and I definitely learn by doing.
This work was centered around nostalgia and the reinvention and evaluation of childhood memories. My colleagues commented that they felt like they rewatched the full hour and a half movie in a minute because the key frames and quotes reminded them of the full scene. The time constraints turned the project in to a very concentrated reflection. During the critique the class also discussed the issues with the moral complications of race and culture associated with The Jungle Book. Though my concentrated reflection was able to avoid some of these complications, the issues should not and can not be invisibilized.
As a whole, I really enjoyed making this work and was inspired by all of the other interpretations of this pressure project!