Cycle 2 “If trees could talk, What would they say?”

In cycle two I wanted to take the experience to a larger scale. I added two more trees to the Makey Makey and worked with my classmate Patrick and instructors Oded and Alex to work on the sound aspect which I was most concerned with during this cycle. We configured the four interviews to come from four individual speakers in the motion lab by creating four channels of sound in Isadora.

Below is an image of what I imagine to be a “raised bed” and row of electric soil of connectivity.

I used aluminum foil to create a more conductive grounding for the soil.

I learned how to build a gate to trigger each of the sound players so that when participants are not connected to the tree and the soil the audio nor the image of the growers will appear.

I chose to keep the raised bed box closer to the screen so that participants could have the feeling of looking up at the trees. My goal was to honor the wisdom coming from Black growers through bringing awareness to trees and how important their communication systems are complex yet work together underneath the soil.

I curated the green lighting, with two identical images of an urban garden on scrims that made a half circle in the space to give participants the feeling that they were truly in the thick of a green space. For African diasporic folx greenery has been a mode of protection and healing through imperial, capitalist empires that often destroy these types of environments for their own social gain.

In this iteration, I wanted to get people to move with me. Folx living in urban areas barely make time for cooking let alone be in a garden working. I want the participants to embody what it feels like to take on some of the labor of what it means to grow your food. Kneeling at the raised bed or pulling weeds, and even harvesting vegetables from the garden are often tough on the back and knees. This kind of labor is seen as servitude in this country. I invite the participants to join me as I do the work. In the 21st century, Black bodies are reclaiming our right to acquire land and provide quality food for our communities.

During this cycle I realized that participants needed a little more incentive to be invited into the space. As a performer I understand that a non-traditional performance asks participants to negotiate how to engage the space. At the beginning introduction, I gave clear instructions on how to engage with the space however once I started to move it was almost as if the participants didn’t want to move because they wanted to pay attention to me.

I figure for cycle 3 I will change my position in the room. It was suggested that I start in front of the raised bed to orient where the main engagement is, do my introduction, and then dance from in front of the screen providing a gesture of invitation into the experience.

Pressure Project #3 Audio

Unfortunately I was too into the experience to record however, I created an audio ecomemory of corn. Ecomemory is a term coined by Melanie L. Harris in her book Ecowomanism. I wanted to illustrate through sound my African American experience with corn. In this Audio project, I wanted to integrate movement, agriculture and technology. I love to layer sounds to create stories. To begin I placed Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the dark as the base sound to provide soul and evoke spirit. I used my voice to give a brief history of Henry Blair the inventor of the corn planter, I also layered a recording of Micheal Twitty an African-American Jewish writer, culinary historian, and educator. He is the author of The Cooking Gene.

He sings a song called the “Whistling walk“. This was a song sung by enslaved folks when they walked down a walkway connected to the big house to serve food to indicate that they were not eating the food. This was layered with the sound of barking dogs with me saying ” hush puppy hush, hush puppy hush”. Hush puppies are made from corn meal and got their name because enslaved folks who liberated themselves would use these corn meal fried delights to keep dogs quite and off their trail. I then added my grandmother’s voice telling a story of her father and how they grew corn on his land. To close I ended with Micheal Twitty in his reconstructed version of the “Whistling walk” he sang, “no more whistling walk for me no more, no more. No more whistling walk for me many thousands gone.” This reconstructed song reclaims African American food labor for future generations who grow and work with food to heal as well as honoring those who had to suffer under chattel slavery.

As the audio played, for the movement aspect I passed around a picture of Henry Blair, a photo of my grandmother hugging me, a can of creamed corn, corn meal mix, and a whole ear of corn. These physical object served as tools of embodiment. I wanted the participants to actively listen, literally, by passing the objects around this put not only my personal memory in motion but also created new memories while evoking past memories. Sankofa is a Ghanaian proverb meaning looking back to go forward, go back and fetch it.

Below are a few photos of my classmates and Alex (the instructor of the course) holding the memory technology.

Cycle II – Bar: Mapped by Alec Reynolds

This iteration of the project was the realization of the first cycle, with physical assets, the framework of the Izzy patch, and actual mapped graphics. More specifically, a section in the ACCAD Motion Lab was selected for its large backdrop (which happens to be a blackout curtain), and versatile lighting opportunities.

There are multiple pieces of this larger projection mapping project:

• Physical Assets: These are the physical pieces that require a mapping and will have a digital projection placed on them uniquely (bottles, screen, box)
• Mapping: The manipulation of content on the software side so that it assimilates the shape of the physical asset
• Communication: Using the effective TouchOSC software, I was able to create a communicating menu that could interact with Isadora and the project patch
• Reaction: The spectacle that occurs to emulate a specialty themed cocktail being ordered.

The projection actor in Isadora is a powerful projection mapping tool and lets you create quick and simple maps for a performance. Bar: Mapped features upwards of 7 maps with unique content going to each different layered asset.

The menu is the device by which each reaction is triggered. TouchOSC channels are enumerated in my Isadora patch, through which OSC listening actors attend to any input from my menu. When a drink is “ordered” it triggers the specific reaction.

The purpose of the project is to create an atmosphere of a nightclub with music in the background and attention drawn to the bar. During the cycle II performance, critical information and feedback was gathered. The volume of the background music is important so as not to drown out the effects of the reactions. It will also be necessary to manipulate the location of the background music so that it creates more of an atmospheric effect versus grabbing a users attention in a distracting way.

Moving into next cycle the following changes will take place:

• Decrease the length of a reaction (~20 sec for Cycle III)
• Paint physical assets white
• Have a louder audio source for reactions
• Modify position of background music
• Add club-like lighting
• Other secret additions…

The cycle III documentation will host a full breakdown of how the Isadora patch works, along with design choice insights.

Cycle 2 – Ashley Browne

For cycle 2, I wanted to start thinking about how the experience could be multiplayer and how both players would have to work together to create an end goal. In this current stage, one player is using the video synthesizer to pass a signal to the screen while player 2 is directly altering the image using the Makey Makey as a controller. The Makeymakey uses the arrow keys to increase the scale of each sphere or color on screen. The video synthesizer can affect the clarity of the image and its hue and contrast. 

Overall, I think this was a great step towards the next iteration of the project. Some of the feedback I received was about introducing sound and how that could connect to both players having specific goals in the experience. Also, I need to continue stress testing the unity file because after a while it seemed to have bugs. 

For cycle 3, I want to finalize what the audio may be like and figure out what the 2nd video input will be for the synthesizer. I also will be finalizing the hardware for the synthesizer, using parts that are sturdier for multiple uses– to prepare for the open house. 

Cycle 1 Project

For my cycle 1 project I wanted to keep with the element of reveal. My intrests live in earth wisdom and agricultural knowledge rooted in the unseen. Within this iteration of the project I wanted to reveal some of the gems the Black growers in my community are graciouly sharing through interviews with me. My graduate studies are based in bridging dance, agricultural, and technology (D.A.T). I am working from a quote from Nikki Giovanni “If trees could talk what would they say?”

I am continously insired by the soil and its ability to generate life, transmute energy and produce healing to humans. The soil in this work is central to the grounding for the entire experience. My goal is to connect and ground the participant in the moment to be present with the images and the knowledge provided by the growers.

My set up consists of the Makey Makey, soil, and two tree models for the participates to touch indicating the wisdom held in trees/people in my community. I wrapped brown pipe cleaners around the interior of the plastic “tree bark” to conduct an eletrical current to set off the digital engagemet with the Makey Makey. As participants touch the bark of the tree model, their hand must be grounded, touching the soil. This connection reveals an image of the growers and activates the interviews.

I realized in this cycle I needed to cut the interviews down to about 30 seconds each because I imagine this as a gallery installation. I watched the bodies in the room shift and kind of zone out as they tried to listen to the stories being told. Audio seems to be key for the experience to translate how I intend. I would like the experience to be so that the participate knows when the experience begins and ends. I got feedback that there should be a more engaging componet. This comment came from a dancer which I agree. In the future I plan to work with the kinetic sensor to provide a movement based engagement for the participants to embody agricultural knowledge to evoke ecomemories. For my second cycle I plan to project four growers and their stories. I would like to add two more trees and create an environment where each grower can be heard and engaged with simultaniously in a green space.

Here are the inner workings of my Isadora patch.

Cycle 2 – Seasons – Min Liu

For this cycle, I wanted to create interactive virtual environments that contribute to embodied learning. I chose Seasons as the theme of this project. Participants can interact with nature things in specific seasons using their bodies. For example, spring & flowers, summer & rain, autumn & falling leaves, winter & snow.

I worked with Touchdesigner this time since Isadora was not friendly to what I wanted to do. I used webcam as the input device. In Touchdesigner, the NVbackground actor can remove the background and the Optical flow actor can track body movements. By ParticleGup, different kind of interactive particles can be created. Since I was not familiar with Touchdesign, I spent a long time figuring out how to transit from one scene to another in time order which is very easy to realize in Isadora. In this cycle, I only created the autumn and winter scenes. I am still learning about other interactive visual effects using different body languages, and how to trigger sound by movements in Touchdesigner. This is the Touchdesigner patch:

I was excited to install it in the motion lab. To avoid shadow, Oded told me that I could project the image onto the back of the screen, and people stand in front of the screen to interact with virtual environments. It’s magical to me seeing both digital figures and human shadows reflected on the curtain from people standing before and behind the curtain.

Participants were happy to interact with snows and leaves. But due to the limitation of the webcam, they must stand in a specific area, or they were out of the screen. I will try Kinect next time to see if I can solve the problem. I also learned that lighting is important because it decides the quality of the real time input video.

Shadrick gave me some nice advice to further develop this learning system. First, I can add some fun filters to digital figures, like wearing them hats in winter.  Second, different countries have different climates characteristics. I can build environments based on different regions. For the next cycle, I will also combine media-enhanced objects and environments together.

Here is the recording of the experience:

Circle 2 – Yujie

For the circle 2, I was going to add the composition of multiple projection screens and audience interaction.But I spent too much time on some technical issues. I end up having little progress on these two things. But I did try something new. I add a viewing experience that aims at defamiliarizing what we see every day as “real” experience. Especially, when we perceive things according to already-made categories. I ask the viewers to invert their iPhone to negative mode. Then they can choose to (or not) use their negative mode camara to see the performance. When they look at the dancer, they will see that she is invert to negative, while when they look at the projection (parts of the body in negative), they will see the normal images. I hope that in consistently seeking to “see”, the viewers will reflect on their own subjective viewing experience and on what they can really “see.”

Here is the recording of the circle 2 showing:

For the circle 3, I will continue what I have left from circle 1 and I will add voice recording of the dancer

1. Develop multiple projections 

2. Audience presence in the performance

3. voice recording of the dancer

Cycle 2, Gabe Carpenter, 4/6/2022

This phase of my project is focused on creating the media aspects of my final project. There are no physical controls involved with this stage, as those were demonstrated in cycle 1. I plan to combine both of these phases in the final project. I began this project by creating my room in Maya. I modeled all of the assets used in the game from scratch and rendered the footage using a render farm and the Deadline system. Below are a few screenshots of the work done in Maya

The next portion of the project involved creating the Isadora patch, which I will link here.

The experience is roughly 4 minutes long, includes a pass/fail ending system, and dynamically responsive choices throughout the game.

Cycle 1

Concept: Following the 20th presidential election in Korea, I wanted to portray beauty of democracy and its hidden dark side. My goal was to articulate the irony of the rigid dichotomies between left and right, old and young, and Southeastern and Southwestern Korea balancing the power of the nation and protecting our democracy. With the emergence of social media, people began to access and believe in different information whether it’s true or not. The nation has become more polarized, and the politicians took advantage of the situation, disuniting the nation to gain more votes. With all the socioeconomic, generational, and regional conflicts and hatred, the polarization became uncontrollable to the point where the very purpose of the governance and elections degenerated into the survival of the party. No matter a plan was good or bad for the nation, each side would disagree with whatever the other side carried forward. One of the few times they agreed upon was when they wanted a pay raise. I got sick of the politicians having double standards towards each other(In Korea, we call this 내로남불, which means, “If I do it, it’s a romance, if you do it, it’s an infidelity.) and disuniting the nation, so I wanted to let my audience be aware of the danger of unconditional support towards certain political party which hinders the self-purification. In order to make rational decisions as voters, I thought it would be important to build mutual gratitude towards each other for bringing prosperity and democracy to the nation.

Methodology: Besides articulating my political thoughts, I wanted to explore the possibilities of texture and layering with the projections. Oded helped me install two projectors facing each other with a scrim in between them. I gathered videos of the poverty after the Korean war, Miracle of the Han River, the military dictatorship and the Democratization Movement, and Korea today with direct elections and added textures that would support the ideas. There was a live camera capture to individualize and highlight citizen power. It ended with intertwining red and blue waves which represents two political sides.

Next step: I think for the first cycle, I understood how to set up the layering of projections, how to add textures to them, and what effects they create. I think for the next step, I would like to add audio so the audience can follower and understand my intentions with the piece. I also want to explore interactivity with motion capture.