←
→

Final Showing-Design your own Relaxation Environment

Posted: December 11, 2019 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment »

I constructed an individual create your own relaxation environment in which one participant at a time could choose from given music genres, background scenes, and background sounds on a Touch OSC interface I designed before entering into a short guided meditation. My goal was to provide a place of escape for students or faculty on campus from the stresses of college, work, life, etc by guiding them through a calming meditation. I wanted the experience to feel safe, cozy, but most of all personal, which reasons why I wanted the participant to make choices about the vibe of their relaxation environment.

Here I am explaining my project to an observer. Behind me you can see my “tent” with a projection hinting someone is inside!
Inside the tent was an oversized cushion, blankets, pillows, and a stuffed animal.
Super comfy!
Two of the four background choices that could be projected onto the tent.

Inside the tent, participants would interact using an iPod touch, following a program I created using Touch OSC. This simplified their choice making by only giving them a few buttons and having them decide on their favorite of the few.

The welcome page and an example of what a the participant would see to choose a background sound. The other choice pages look very similar.
I also found it important to ask the participants how they felt before and after the experience. I hoped that by claiming their position of their state of being before the program, by the end they would notice an improvement of mood.

However, while my interface looks simple, my Isadora program is much more complex.

Here is the programming for the “rate your mood” page. Each button on Touch OSC would send a message to Isadora through the OSC Listener (seen on right). I programmed that when a button was pushed, an image would project onto the tent of a reciprocating face icon. So if they pressed ‘:(‘ a sad face appeared onto the tent or ‘:D’ projected an excited face. The complexity of this programming lies in the details. I ensured that when one image displayed, the others turned off so that the faces would never overlap despite a participant potentially pressing multiple moods.

The trickiest aspect about working with Touch OSC and Isadora is actually allowing Isadora to send messages back to Touch OSC. I didn’t want the participant to do any work other than make choices about their relaxation environment. That means, in order for their interface to progress automatically to the next page, I needed Isadora to send it a message to move on. Alex and I worked on this extensively, but eventually resolved this by using the actor ‘OSC Multi Transmit’ and ensuring the incoming port number on OSC matches the port on that actor. In this case I used 9999 seen on the left image in the top right corner. (Also refer to my Cycle 2 post for more on problem solving this task!)

My other huge problem solving accomplishment was understanding how to activate my choice scenes (music, background, and sound) throughout the performance. In these pictures you see my programming for my music choice scene. I struggled because after participants selected a music genre and continued on with the program, their music selection wouldn’t play because that scene was no longer active. Instead the ‘texture’ scene was active.
To fix this I inserted a ‘confirm’ scene following each choice scene which included the “Activate Scene” actor. When triggering the Activate Scene actor, the designated scene (in this case music scene) would reactivate and allow multiple scenes to play at once. This way I could have music and background sounds play while having a projection up and run the meditation track all at the same time.

Overall, most of my participants gave positive feedback and encouraged me to further this idea by creating a more established relaxation environment somewhere on campus. I felt my final showing for DEMS was a very successful prototype. I think that my program could become more robust by running it on a machine with a better processor. My personal laptop crashed multiple times while running the program and disrupted some participants mid-mediation.

I think I would be interested in establishing this idea some place on campus because it truly promotes positive well being. Especially being in such a stressful environment, taking care of one’s mental and emotional state in crucial. This program would teach people that it’s okay to need a break sometimes, so why not break in a place you can personalize?!

Leave a Reply

←
→