PP3 – Mysterious Riddles

Posted: October 21, 2019 | Author: Taylor Olsen | Filed under: Uncategorized |2 Comments »

For this pressure project we had to reveal a mystery within 3 minutes with the following caveats:
1. Create an experience for one or more participants
2. In this experience a mystery is revealed
3. You must use Isadora for some aspect of this experience
4. Your human/computer interface may(must?) NOT include a mouse or keyboard.

**Above is an attachment of my ideation**

Ideation

• Have users move around a space to use an alpha mask to reveal lines that lead to spaces where more movement is needed to maintain a visual / note. [3 Phases]
  • Use colors as the visual indicators of objects
    • White? Orange? Green? (What colors do people generally stray away from?)
      • What materials?
        • Balloons
        • Paper
        • Cubes / Discs

• Use camera movements to “wipe away” an image to reveal something underneath. Modes of revealing are referenced either literally or figuratively. [3 Phases]
  • Use movement to reveal the visual
    • How the “wiping” initially introduced as the method of revealing?
      • Spinning Shapes (?)
        1. Spinning wiper blade
      • Real World examples (?)
        1. Wiper blade on a car windshield
      • Literal Instructions (?)
        1. Move your arms/body to wipe away the visual
  • The image / text underneath gives them their next interactive “mode” to reveal the next scene.
    Use audio to reveal the scene.
    • Top / Mid / Bottom splits (horizontal)
      • Frequency ranges
      • Tenor freq. – Top Band /  Alto freq. – Mid Band / Bass freq. – Low Band

Process

• Create the webcam interactivity

To do this, there needs to be a webcam hooked up to Isadora. After the interface is “live”, I used a Difference actor to notice these variations and output them to a virtual stage. On Virt Stage 1: we can see this effect being used. The grey area is the dynamically recorded imagery being noticed as separate pixels on from the webcam. On Virt Stage 2: we can see that I changed the visuals to a threshold–making them stand out as pure white. Through this pipeline, I then used a Calculate Brightness actor to notice the amount of white-pixels (created by movement) on the screen. This number could then be base-lined, and outputted to an Inside Range actor.

You might notice on Stage 1 (not virtual) that the grainy pieces along the edges of the imagery are less apparent–this is due to ‘grabbing’ the frame (Freeze actor), and regulating the change in imagery rather than having it be constantly examined. Putting this through an Effect Mixer actor, I was able to have a threshold of the original image and the live-frames being used. This provided a more smooth measurement of the difference in frames rather than a disruption from stray pixels. Putting this data through a Smoother actor also alleviated arbitrary numbers that would ‘jump’ and disrupt the data stream.

• Use the webcam interactivity as a base for the elucidation of visuals

After creating the webcam interactivity, I used the Inside Range actor as the basis of measuring how many times ‘movement’ was captured. This was done by having a trigger activate when the amount of white on the screen (from movement) was enough to trigger a reaction. I used this to ‘build’ tension as a meter filled up to reveal text underneath. The triggers were sent to a Counter actor, and then to a shape actor to continuously update the width of the shape. To make sure that the participants kept moving, the meter would go recede back to normal through a Pulse Generator actor. This pulse was subtracting the numbers, rather than counting. On top of this, there was a beeping sound that increased in amplitude and the speed at which it was played if it was continuously triggered. This extra bit of feedback made the audience more aware that what they were doing was having an effect.

• Use the motion data to influence the experience

As the amount of threshold from the pixels was attained, the experience would jump to another scene to reveal the answer to the riddle. Though I didn’t give the user a choice to try to answer the riddle, I think this would have pushed the experience over the 3-minute mark. It came in 3 phases: Movement, Audio, Movement & Audio.
For the Audio version, I used the microphone of the webcam and the same ‘building’ shape technique as the movement scene.
For the dual combination, I upped the amount of times the Pulse Generator triggered the subtraction from the counter, but made sure that both the sound and movement was being accounted for. This made the experience more difficult to achieve if someone was solely moving, or making noise. Having both required a deeper level of interactivity beyond the standard of just one of them working to complete the task.

For those who are interested (and for my own reference) here’s the list of actors that I used within the patch:

• Picture Player
• Video In / Audio In Watcher
• Freeze
• Threshold
• Max Value Hold
• Calculate Brightness
• Calculator
• Effect mixer
• Background Color
• Alpha Mask
• Gaussian Blur
• Text Draw
• Text Formatter
• Dots
• Jump++
• Projector
• Enter Scene Trigger
• Trigger Delay
• Enter Scene Value
• Pulse Generator
• Counter
• Inside Range
• Shapes

Outcome

I think that I would have changed this experience to have more of a ‘choice’ once the user filled up the meter. Though, making them re-do the experience if they guessed wrong might push back the notion to continue in the first place (my subjects might get tired). I could just have a glaring noise if they guessed wrong, and allow them to continue the experience. I also wanted to use the choice through an object or a body to make the decision. Things to think about for next time!

-Taylor

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