Pressure Project 2 – Escape Otherworld
Posted: February 8, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »I’ve been to Otherworld some years ago so I was excited to go back. It’s a really strange space, but that’s what’s interesting about it, especially when I was able to find patterns or “figure out” a room. There were a few rooms that drew my attention at first. One was the mush-room (really funny joke). What I found interesting in it was the cow room, which had a very Legend of Zelda puzzle in it. Basically, there are six colored levers attached to a machine that itself is attached to the cow’s utters, and there is an order in which you need to pull the levers in order to get some effect. It was interesting to see how people would solve this puzzle, if they did at all (and a lot didn’t, mostly because they didn’t stay in the room long enough to realize that anything was afoot), but there were two notable instances. Sometimes what would happen is someone would be pulling random levers and then they would pull the correct one and something different would happen. In a few cases, people just started pulling levers to see if anything would happen, which lead to finding out that if you pull the levers in a certain order they don’t make the cow angry. Through trial and error they figured out the combination and the cow did fun things.
An image of the cow doing fun things!
However, some people also noticed this panel on the back wall with lights of different colors that would come on in a certain pattern. Someone then put together that the color of the lights was the same as the color of the levers and from there they found out that the light pattern was the order of the levers, which is not something I noticed at all but was really neat.
The interesting hint light panel that I didn’t notice because I’m not a true gamer
The room I actually want to talk about though because I can’t stop thinking about it is one of the first ones that people encounter. It’s right in the beginning and it’s this plainly sci-fi looking room with a bunch of panels and buttons.
This is the panel room, I stole this image because I didn’t have any good photos of this room and I didn’t expect to be talking about it but here we are: https://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/inside-columbus-otherworld-an-immersive-choose-your-own-adventure-sci-fi-art-installation/Slideshow/12234210
At first, I wasn’t really interested in this room. For starters, the first button I pressed made all the screens display a rick roll, and I almost cried. In general, most of the panels weren’t related from what I could tell. Some of them had small games, like one had a game where you have to time pressing a button to cause a system overload. Some had videos that showed a scientist talking about Otherworld itself, which are interesting from a lore perspective but weren’t super interesting from the experience side (most people just watched them, which isn’t very interesting to describe haha). There was one panel that I saw a kid playing with that had a camera view of another room, specifically the mouth cave room, and when the button was pressed a sound effect would play like a burp. That I thought was very interesting. I tried playing with the panel myself, apparently you can change the sound effect played by turning this knob. What I wanted to know is if those sounds were being played to people inside the mouth room. Anytime one of the sound effects was played I stared intently at the panel to see if anyone would react. Unfortunately, basically no one had any sort of interesting reaction, so I couldn’t really tell if the sounds were going through. I went to the mouth cave room myself to see if I could hear anything (I probably sat in that room for like 10 minutes too), but I didn’t hear any noises. I don’t know if this was because no one was playing sounds or because the sounds aren’t being projected, but I’m like 90% certain that the sounds matter. Even if it doesn’t, people that I saw using the panel had sort of a devious way of playing, like they were messing with others in the experience.
The original room, and a little about how it works. Not super complicated all things considered.
Regardless, I started to think about this room as a sort of control room, for the whole experience really. I didn’t see any other panels in this control room that linked to other rooms, but I started to think about what it would be like if this room was connected to all the other ones and in a reverse Five Nights at Freddy’s or regular Hunger Games sort of way, if you could make different things happen in other rooms. As I was just exploring on my own, I started to see places where the room could definitely have jump-scared me in a haunted house sort of way. As I was looking through drawers in this room, I felt like this guy could have jumped out and grabbed me.
Similarly, while I was in this gothic/lovecraftian spider room, I had a chilling moment where I thought I remembered this bloke being an animatronic that moves around, but it was still. Then, when I turned around to focus on a different part of the room, I heard it move, and just as a turned around I could just barely see it move before it stopped again and never moved the entire time I was there. What if people could mess with others in these really minute ways? It would be kind of horrible, but it would be fun
it looks like a Bloodborne boss ngl, this thing scared me
The devious room where you play nasty pranks on people
I also started thinking about some of the puzzles I saw and some of the ways I saw couples collaborating in these rooms, and then a different idea came into my head. It happened while I was trying to explain what Otherworld was and one of my friends said: “It’s like an escape room except the goal isn’t to escape.” What would Otherworld function like as an escape room of some sort? The person in the control room is almost like the game master. I also remembered this strange moment where in the aforementioned spider room, the antique phone started ringing, some random guy came in, answered it (as if he knew this phone would ring), and then left. Aside from the fact that it was weird, it could be interesting to have connections between the rooms; maybe the phone is connected to the room with the bats, and you have to speak into one of their ears to communicate with the spider room phone? What if Otherworld was this Toolmaker’s paradigm fever dream where each person was put in a different room, and they had to figure out how to communicate with each other? It would be interesting to see a place like Otherworld or Meow Wolf with this alien aesthetic, but the goal is the solve some greater puzzle instead of the puzzle being an optional thing or the room interactions being disconnected.
Otherworldly Experience
Posted: February 8, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project, Pressure Project 2 Leave a comment »This room is one of the first rooms I experienced. It is immediately after the room that Rick rolls guests and allows them to mess with other guests throughout the facility. It is a dimly lit room with three ominous human sized capsules. They all surround a giant sphere suspended in the air with what looks like wires from each of the capsules leading into it.
The capsules are really eye catching so many guests that entered the room immediately walked into them to check it out. Then they hear a noise in the pod and can see the side light up. This prompted nearly all of them to go looking for other people nearby to fill the other two pods to see what may happen. Once three people are standing in the pods They begin to flash black and white as well as the lights leading to the orb. At the same time a noise that sounds like static electricity is whirling around the room. Finally, the room goes dark and all is quiet then the guests standing in the pods are sprayed with gusts of air. Caught off guard, the guests let out a scream or flee from the container.
There is not much I would want to redesign with how the system is able to capture people’s attention and clearly convey what needs to be done to activate. So, what I would add would be some sort of fog like effect that is also ejected with the puff of air as well as maybe tone down the air pressure, but keep it spraying for longer. This would hopefully make it a bit less of a jump scare and make it seem cooler when the guest leaves the pod.
Pressure Project 2
Posted: February 7, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Other World was quite an experience, I was intrigued from the start, there was a fractal projection surface outside of the exhibit spaces that I didn’t notice until light hit the surface and revealed the perfectly projection mapped textures on each triangular piece. I knew I was in for a treat.
I was particularly interested in the spaces that felt like a portal and infinite almost like a forest. The room that caught my attention was what I would call the infinite light forest. There were mirrors on all of the walls in the room with poles of light that were about 8 to 10 feet tall and shifted colors. There was also an ambient space like musical track playing from hidden speakers, that sparked a sense of curiosity As I took a closer look there were individual wires above connected to each light for power and signaling the light change. When I first entered the room I thought touching the poles initiated some part of the experience, as I observed, I noticed other folx thought the same. This exhibit turned out to be an ongoing light show that could seemingly go on forever.
People moved in-between the lanes of light and around the light pole fixtures. There was no particular pattern or path for one to take within this experience. I enjoyed how you were able to journey at your own pace to take in the vastness of the moody space.
I started to think about how I would reimagine this space if it were my project. I would shift the space into a digital tree forest.
First, I would change all of the light fixtures to trees and keep the mirrors for the infinite effect and add an interactive touch element to the bark that you must stay connected to, to learn facts about native trees in the state. In constructing the space I would source the energy and wires from below like a root system verses above. Second, I would shift the sound in the space to wind blowing through trees and sounds of leaves crunching under your feet. For my last augmentation of the space I would add a motion sensor to active wind/a fan as people move through the space to feel as if they are in a surreal natural environment.
Pressure Project 2: visiting the Other World
Posted: February 6, 2024 Filed under: Pressure Project 2 Leave a comment »This is the system I picked to spend time observing:
I decided to pause at this system because by the time I arrived here, it happened that some people are engaged with solving the puzzles of this interaction. I got intrigued by that. Also, I was very drawn to the design (and the non-interactive components) in the space as well – a poster on the wall indicate the connection between the nervous system and the gut (a topic fascinating to me!), and a glass window, the drawer of which can be opened, where there are many weirdly-interesting ceramic creatures.
Diagram of the system (upper)
Diagram of people interacting (lower)
People begin their experience by arriving at the space from three different directions. They first register their arrival at a new interactive system. Then some would observe the space first, touch the structure, or go directly to push a button on the glass boxes to see what may trigger. The button is the key to interaction, however, it needs to be pushed in a certain order to trigger an ultimate effect, otherwise it is just the light traveling through the channel, while some people might be satisfied by this and go on to the next one, other people are determined to figure out. There is an experimental guideline (with some words highlighted which seems to be the clues) on a wall, it is the key to solving the puzzle (the order of pushing the four buttons). After pushing the buttons in the correct order, a pattern appears on the screen, with some light effects, some people take a quick picture of the screen and go on to the next room.
Re-design the system:
What I am interested in doing is making people less goal-oriented, it seems that once people solve the puzzle, they are no longer interested in exploring the system again, or not even pay attention to the interesting set design in the room. The modification I wanna make:
– the button can be replaced with the shape of a tentacle, or something in the shape of a laboratory tool (to echo with the overall vibe)
– each time they solve the button puzzle, a different pattern would appear.
– the pattern is in the appearance of a creature in correspondence to the real object in space, and then they need to find that object, and touch it
– the touch has to be in a range of a certain pressure, for a certain length, (I wanna some more sensorial experience, rather than just a trigger – task complete.), preferably, the touch has to be completely between two people. (Does this sounds to nefarious?)
Pressure Project 2
Posted: February 5, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »For Pressure Project 2 the assignment was to go to Other World or some place where you could interact with something. I decided to go to Other World because i had never been and was intrigued with what I was going to experience. The instructions were:
– Choose one of those rooms and take notes/ pics
– Evaluate how the interaction is happening. How do I think it works?
– Observe what people are doing and how they are interacting with it/ experiencing it
– Suggest a an EVIL or GOOD option to it (tweak the system/ twist their design)
I chose one of the first rooms I walked into and that was a room full of colorful light poles with mirrors on each wall. There may have been 50 poles in the room, all the same size that gradually changed colors. The wall being a mirror made it look like there was an infinite amount of light poles in the room. I couldn’t quite figure out the interactivity of the light poles other than people walking through the space. At first I thought there was a correlation between walking past the light poles and the colors change, but it wasn’t obvious enough for me to believe in that theory. This is my drawing of the room.
As a suggestion for this room, I have a few things.
- I would add a reactive device to the poles that can detect body heat or movement. If someone walks past that pole the color of the pole drastically changes and/or changes to white when you’re near it.
- It would be cool to add a fan to the light poles so that when you pass through a lane of poles, you feel a gust of air on your skin (I wold do this similarly with a light mist too!)
- Lastly I would add a heat and/or touch reactor to the light poles, so if you touch the light pole it gradually changes color. However when you let go of the pole it goes back to its originally light.
PP2 | Otherworld Luminous Mushroom Garden
Posted: February 5, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Of the numerous interactive environments at Otherworld, the exhibit which caught my interest most was what I interpreted to be a mushroom garden. This occurs prior to entering the exhibit with the mechanical feeding room for the bull with pyramid shaped utters and groans at you when you enter the wrong feeding sequence. This room consists of an elegant three starred archway with three groupings of mushroom capped surfaces sitting above planters. All of these illuminated surfaces are animated by overhead projectors carefully placed, angled and programmed to giving the environment a feeling that it is alive and in motion. This is not unique as most of the exhibits at otherworld rely on projection mapping techniques; however, what stood out to me was its interactivity.
As demonstrated in the videos below, there are spinning colored discs mapped outside each mushroom cap, which when stepped on, cause a flood of color to spill outwards onto the floor. The structure reminds more of gas diffusion such as smoke, flames, or fog due to the speed of expansion, geometric structure and color. Although I could not tell precisely how the system worked, I imagine there was some element of camera or other sensing which could detect the area of color detected on those spinning disks. When your foot covers the disc, it triggers the color to flow – so I presume the system has a threshold at which it detects shadows present on the disc spot. Further, each flow pattern was unique meaning that no two times that you stepped on the disk would there be the same structure / flow observed. To me this means there must be some random variable detected from the environment which governs how the light will flow. I am familiar with these types of flow generation techniques such as this reaction-diffusion generator made by Karl Sims https://www.karlsims.com/rdtool.html based on mathematical models of physical phenomena https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction%E2%80%93diffusion_system. While they probably don’t have as complex of a mathematical model as described above, it still serves to suggest that there is some math involved to compute how the light will flow across a surface based on some initial random variable.
As a study in natural interaction, I observed several people as they entered the room and played around. For most, they seemed impressed by the scenery and were engaged visually by the Moire like pattens visible on the mushrooms. I could tell this by how the setting drew in their attention. However, most people didn’t notice the interactive element as they didn’t step on the spinning light discs. There was one person who did realize the hidden interactivity and chose to step on all of the discs. I found it interesting that she chose to jump from one disc to the next as they were spaced within hopping distance. This reminded me of games I’d play with my sister as a child which we called the floor is lava and we would try to move through a room only stepping on furniture and not the carpeting. As a benevolent alteration to this interactive design, it’d be interesting to account for tracking of human movement from one disc to the next. Perhaps if the person can jump from one end of the room to the next while triggering each of the discs, that the room will acknowledge this accomplishment as is done in the next room when the right sequence is fed to the bull utters. This may be technically challenging given the short detection time allowed for a sensor when someone is hopping quickly through an environment. Secondly, there would be a challenge in synchronizing detection of events from multiple cameras; yet, I bet there is already a centralized media server acting as the master to its various child projectors and sensors.