Palm Stillness Reader/Fortune Teller

Pressure Project #1

As I brainstormed for the the first pressure project (during the first few minutes of my 6 hour period), I knew I wanted to use Eyes++ and it’s computer vision as my user input. I thought that this would give me an element of randomness as the input was being fed in “real time” throughout the sequence. In contrast, my non-random response was the set of fortunes that were displayed as the user’s score declined in each interval. I used a pair of comparators to tie in the fortunes saying “You’re amazing. You will have good fortune in the future” for a score above 400, “So so, you’ve got a rocky road ahead of you.” for a score in between 400 and 150, and “You probably fail at a lot of things in life.. keep it up champ” for a score lower than 150. Yea, I know, harsh words for those who couldn’t sit 100% still for 60 seconds.

During this same brainstorming phase I envisioned a process that would prompt the user to stand in front of the camera with their arms stretched horizontally outwards and hold that position for as long as possible (within the bounds of an outline . I added a Difference actor my Eyes++ output so I could detect motion easily with the live webcam input. Unfortunately I couldn’t configure the difference/blob settings to pick up my arms consistently, so I pivoted my idea and decided to just focus on picking up the velocity of one blob (aka my hand) and sensing the moments that it is moving.

I wanted this experience to have game mechanics so I decided to start the score at 500 and decrease the score rapidly whenever the Eyes++ detected a movement. It was pointed out that it would have been easier if the score regenerated. I initially intended for this but the idea was lost with my pivot and lack of time.

Feedback:

Going into the presentation I thought that my project structure felt too “basic” in comparison to the others who had gone before me. The experience was difficult for a majority of the people who tried it, which led to not as many people attempting (although the feedback was that everyone understood what would happen based on their movements and they didn’t feel the urge to try it out).  An improvement would be a change to the rate of score decay and regeneration of score. This would ultimately maintain the feeling of being locked into a particular area and continue to fulfill my goal of working with the users nervous system and score based engagement. I also think suspenseful music in the background would have added entertainment value and obviously suspense.

Additional Shots: