Pressure Project #2

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!

https://vimeo.com/293466317