Pressure Project 2: The Mystery is You
Posted: October 16, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »The theme of pressure project 2 was “A Mystery is Revealed”. I wanted to build a cohesive experience with internal thematic consistency. To save time I chose to start with the physical resources I had available and find digital assets to match. For example, I knew that I wanted illumination at the point of reveal and I had a string of golden twinkle lights that I was able to trigger with an Arduino. I knew that I wanted to use some consistent symbology and I had a cedar plank that I had carved a feather into a year ago. I found a golden feather image that I could use for the projections that would tie the two physical resources together.
Top: Chest with the golden lights and cedar carving. Bottom: Golden feather image that I found for thematic consistency.
Resources
- Time (10 hours)
- Laptop
- Isadora
- Arduino Board
- Door
- Webcam
- Video
- Forest audio
- Chest
- Feather carving in wood
- Mirror
- Twinkle Lights
- Photos of the Motion Lab (MoLa)
- Michael H. (Master of the MoLa)
- Overhead projector, 360º projection
Score
I chose to use the monomyth template to help craft a compelling story and expedite the writing process. The experience is meant to be a group experience that leads to a single-player experience with group observation. At the beginning of the experience, each member of the group is considered “the character,” but at the turning point one self-selected member becomes “the hero.”
The story begins at the character’s baseline. They are walking through a forest they’ve known their whole life. Today something feels different. The character enters the MoLa where they see an idyllic forest projected on the main screen with a less prominent projection of stone and vines on the door to the left.
The character is called to action when they happen upon a strange symbol and a mysterious audio track begins to play – a simple chord progression played on a synthesizer in the key of C with some dissonant notes on the second and fourth chords. A disembodied voice provides supernatural aid. The voice is meant to skate the line between enticing and menacing. The voice promises to set the character on a path to an eternal mystery that many before have sought. The mystery can lead to riches or ruin, enlightenment or deception. The overhead projector throws a white circle onto the ground in front of the main screen and beckons “step forward.”
When motion is detected in the circle of light, the path is revealed. The symbol from the main projector materializes on the door and the voice beckons “seek… me.” The music changes from the mysterious track to a sparse, driving bass track intended to build tension.
The character approaches and opens the door to the storage room. From previous experiences in the MoLa, people are hesitant to pile into the store room. The hero is expected to descend to the chest alone, while the group gathers outside the threshold. As the hero opens the chest, they are bathed in light (atonement). As they look into the chest, their own distorted face gazes back in a curved mirror (gift of the Goddess). For a moment, only the hero knows the mystery until they choose whether or not to share it with the group.
Valuaction/evaluation
My pressure project centered around two themes. The primary theme is that each person is a mystery even unto themselves. Self-awareness exists on a spectrum, but even those on the high end know themselves only within the limited context of their own experiences. For example, if life has granted you relative safety and security, you don’t know the person you would become if you were starving. Conversely if life has handed you constant hardship, you don’t know how you would respond to sudden abundance.
The secondary theme is that while self-knowledge is a worthy pursuit, it is not without its perils. The ego can deceive. Sometimes we justify our preconceptions and externalize aspects of ourselves that make us uncomfortable.
While these themes are personally meaningful, I was not convinced that they would come across in the performance.
Performance
The performance went well, especially for not having access to the MoLa prior to the morning of the installation (due to illness during the week prior). There were two minor issues, one my fault, and one an unforeseen environmental constraint.
Isadora began to crash in the hour leading up to the performance, and some of my progress was lost. I was unsure how the final performance would go and what would be lost. Because of my nerves during the performance I found myself pacing and accidentally triggered the reveal by walking in front of the camera. This rushed the reveal, but I believe that this went unnoticed by the audience.
When developing my score I envisioned the chest to be sitting in a dark room, lit only by the bleed from the door projector. As the hero opened the chest, they would be bathed in light, increasing the intrigue and anticipation for the rest of the audience. During installation I learned that the lights in the store room could not be controlled. As soon as the hero crossed the threshold, the lights would automatically trigger. This detracted a little bit from the dramatic image that I had intended. This was a minor bummer, but it wasn’t a major dealbreaker.
Initial forest video projection
Call to action and Supernatural Aid
The mystery unveiled (re-recorded from home in the intended darkness). It looks really cool in the dark (hard to re-create the unveiling of the face with a phone).
Initial Score. I ultimately decided to swap the makey makey for the Arduino because it could run self-contained in the chest without worrying about routing the wires back to the computer when the chest was closed. In the final experience several of these ideas were altered and removed for time. Note from the time log that I made the audio very simple. This is the type of thing that I would normally sink a lot of time into, but the demands of the pressure project forced me to strategically simplify so that I could divert valuable time to other aspects that would provide more value. Overall I think the simplicity worked really well for the experience and putting more time into intricate music design may well have detracted from the overall experience.
Sketches of the door and MoLa. I used these to help develop the vision remotely and to continually simplify my initial vision to balance the time that I had available and the vision that I had in my head.
Atmospherics scene in Isadora. This enabled me to keep all of the persistent projections and atmospheric audio tracks playing seamlessly throughout the experience. I named all of the scenes after the corresponding phase of The Hero’s Journey, which was a really nice organizing schema during scoring, evaluation, and performance.
The experience was heavy on exposition. I created a User Actor called Speak Chain that allowed me to introduce and control meaningful pauses in the disembodied voice.