The Synesthetic Speakeasy – Cycle 1 Proposal

For our first cycle I’d like to explore narrative composition and storytelling techniques in VR.  I’m interested in creating a vintage speakeasy / jazz lounge environment in which the user passively experiences the mindsets of the patrons by interacting with objects that have significance to the person they’re associated with!  This first cycle will likely be experimentation with interaction mechanics and beginning to form a narrative.

Peter’s Produce Pressure Project (2)

For our second pressure project, I used an Arduino (similar to a Makey-Makey) to allow for users to interact with a banana and orange as vehicles for generating audio.  As the user touches a piece of fruit, a specific tone begins to pulse.  Upon moving that fruit, it’s frequency increases with velocity.  Then, if both pieces of fruit move quickly enough, geometric shapes on-screen explode!  Once you let go of them, the shapes will reform into their geometric representations.

Our class’s reaction to the explosion was awesome; I wasn’t expecting it to be that great of a payoff 🙂

cool gloves

cycle 1 plans

Computer vision which tracks movement of 1 (maybe two) people moving in different quadrants (or some other word that doesn’t imply 4) of the video sensor (eyes or maybe use kinect to work with depth of movement as well), such that different combinations of movement trigger different sounds. (ie, lots of movement in upper half and stillness below triggers buzzing, reverse triggers a stampede or alternating up and down distal movement triggers sounds of wings flapping…. more to come if I can figure that out.

Pressure Project 2

https://osu.box.com/s/7evtez7zjct0hg2ws4o9g2zlj04mb0qg

I started with a series of makey makey water buttons as a trigger for sounds and wanting to come up with different sequences of triggering to jump to different scenes. So if you touched the blue bowl of water then the green then yellow twice and then green again, through the calculator and inside range actors, you get moved to another scene. The made up the scenes trying to create variations on the colors and shapes that were part of the first scene, save for one, that was just 3 videos of the person interacting fragmented and layered with no sound. The latter was to make a interruption of sorts. BUT…. in practice, people triggered the water buttons so quickly that scenes didn’t have time to develop and the motion detection and interpretation from some of the scenes (affecting shape location and sound volume), didn’t become part of the experience. Considering now how to provide a frame for those elements to be more immediately explored, to slow people down in engaging with the water bowls whether via text or otherwise AND the possibility of a trigger delay to make time between each action.

Meta EVERYTHING – Performance and Media Taxonomy

I wanted to share a video with you all!  A virtual reality researcher recorded himself with Kinects interacting with a computer program, entered that recording in the present, and interacted with what his past self was creating.  The interaction is a here / there / virtual, now / then, and actor / prop / mirror / costume all bundled into one!  It’s fascinating and I hope you all enjoy 🙂

Cheers,

Peter