Scrying – Cycle 3
Posted: December 15, 2023 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »For Cycle 3, I made a few expansions/updates!
Firstly, I expanded the project from one to two crystal balls. This meant creating more visuals and more music. My goal was to contrast the slow, cool, foggy blue feeling of the first scene. I eventually settled on red as the primary color, and decided to make the visuals sharper and faster moving than those of the first scene:
It was important to me to create visuals and music that would be interesting separately, but would also be able to combine well. If both crystal balls are being interacted with at once, both of their audiovisual scenes would play back at once. I wanted this combination to be a meaningful part of the experience.
Additionally in this cycle, I added projection mapping onto the tops of the crystal ball stands themselves that triggered when the crystal ball was interacted with. These projections had a similar look and feel to their corresponding larger projections. This led to a whole host of technical problems but created a really cool effect, making it feel like something magical was happening on the stand itself.
The problems occurred because, of course, the projection mapping consists of light, and the amount of light is what is being detected by the system to decide whether to play the scene or not (duh!……….) So the scene would trigger and would stay triggered because of the light from the projection. I solved this by utilizing masking in Isadora. I created masks to cover up the parts of the projections where the cameras would be.
My final addition was subtle, but I think significant. I added a very low drone to the space that played constantly, even when nothing was being triggered. This was included to transition the experiencers into the space and provide an audible contrast between a normal room and the installation space. My feeling was that without some sort of audible cue, the space would feel too “normal” when no sounds or visuals were being triggered. The low drone provided a tapestry on top of which the crystal balls could weave their music.
If I were to proceed forward with this piece, my first goal would be to add more crystal balls! I think the piece could work well and be even more interesting with several of them. They could interact with each other in so many different ways!
I also think I would like to incorporate something more to solidify the emotional themes of the piece. I really enjoy the visuals I created, and they are designed to represent very real and contrasting emotions. I also think it could be interesting to redo the visuals and incorporate something slightly less abstract, like videos of some significant place or event, and processing those in a visually interesting and artistically meaningful way.
