Pressure Project #1

For my first pressure project, I wanted to create a system that was entirely dependent on those observing it. I wanted the system to move between two different visual ideas upon some form of user interaction. I used the Eyes++ actor to control sizes, positions and explode parameters of two different shapes while using the loudness of the sound picked up by the microphone to control explode rates and various frequency bands to control the color of the shapes. The first scene, named “Stars,” uses two shapes, sent to four different explode actors, with one video output of the shapes actor being delayed by 60 frames. The second scene, “Friends,”, uses the same two shapes, exploding in the same way, but this time, adds an alpha mask on the larger shapes of the incoming video stream with either a motion blur effect or a dots filter.

Before settling on the idea of using sound frequencies to determine color, I originally wanted to determine the color based on the video input. Upon implementing this, I found that my frame rate dropped dramatically, from approximately 20-24 FPS to 7-13 FPS, thus leading me to use the sound frequency analyzer actor instead.

While I was working on this project, I spent a lot of time sitting directly in front of my computer, often in public places such as the Ohio Union and the Fine Arts Library, which resulted in me testing the system with much more subtle movements and quieter audio input. In performance, everyone engaged with the system from much further back than I had the opportunity to work with, and at a much louder volume. Because of this, the shapes moved around the screen much more rapidly and lead to the first scene ending rather quickly and the second scene lasting much longer. The reason for this is because the transition into the second scene was triggered by a certain number of peaks in volume, whereas the transition back to the first scene was triggered by a certain amount of movement across the incoming video feed.

One of the things I would wish to improve on if I had more time would be to fine-tune the movement of shapes across the screen so they would seem a little less chaotic and a little more fluid. I also would want to spend some time trying to optimize the transition between the scenes, as I noticed a visible drop in frame rate.

Zip Folder with the Isadora file: macdonald_pressure_project01