Scrying – Cycle 2

For Cycle 2, I moved the project into the Motion Lab!

First, I needed to decide on a few things. How would I present the visuals? How would I present the crystal ball? How did I eventually want different crystal balls to interact with each other?

I ended up projecting the visuals onto the large front screen. The crystal ball I placed on a pedestal near the center of the room.

A challenge that presented itself during this cycle was the lighting conditions in the space. Ideally, the room would be quite dark, but of course as it turns out some amount of light is needed for the camera to detect any change in brightness (duh!….) Also, after being triggered once, the light from the projection could be reflected in the glass and interfere with the brightness detection, keeping it from ever shutting off! To solve these problems, I decided on using a small amount of constant top-down light shining on the crystal ball’s pedestal. The webcam would be positioned such that a clear shadow would be created on it when a person’s hand was near the crystal ball, and this lighting difference proved to be enough to create consistent behavior in spite of the other complicating factors.

For Cycle 3, the plan is to add more crystal balls and make more audiovisual scenes for them!