Pressure Project 3: Puzzle Box
Posted: April 2, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Isadora, Pressure Project, Pressure Project 3 Leave a comment »Well uh the thing is is that the project didn’t work. The idea was for a box to have a puzzle entirely solvable without any outside information. Anyone with any background can have a fair chance at solving the puzzle. So, because I am not a puzzle making extraordinaire, I had to take inspiration from elsewhere. It just so happens that a puzzle with just those requirements was gifted to me as a gift from my Grandpa. It is called a Caesar’s Codex. The puzzle works by presenting the user with a four rows of symbols that can slide up and down then right next to it is a single column of symbols. Then on the back is a grid full of very similar symbols to the ones with the four rows. Finally, their are symbols on the four sides that are similar to the ones on the column next to the four rows.
Now the challenge is to get this fully mechanical system to interact with the user interface created in Isadora. The solution was to use a Makey Makey kit. So the wat the user moves the pieces to solve the puzzle needed to change, but the hints to solve the puzzle needed to stay the same. The mechanical puzzle requires flipping the box over constantly to find the right symbol on the grid and then flip it over again to move the row to the right position. I opted to just have the grid portion be set up to directly solve the puzzle.
The paperclips are aligned in a grid like pattern for the users to follow. There is one unique paperclip color to indicate the start. The binder clips are used to indicate when an alligator clip needs to be attached to the paperclip. When the alligator clip is attached to the right paper clip, the screen shown on Isadora will change. Unfortunately, I never tested whether or not the paperclips were conductive enough. I assumed they would, but the coating on the paper clips was resistive enough to not allow a current to flow through them. So, lesson learned, always test everything before it is too late to make any changes, or you make your entire design based on it.
Pressure Project 3
Posted: March 28, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project Leave a comment »A Mystery is Revealed | Color By Numbers
Initially, I began this project with uncertainty about the mystery I wanted to explore. Reviewing past student work, I stumbled upon a personality test concept that intrigued me, expanding my understanding of what constitutes as a mystery.
Following my usual design process, I sought inspiration from Pinterest and various design platforms. A comic called “Polychromie” by artist Pierre Jeanneau caught my attention, particularly its use of anaglyph—a technique where stereo images are superimposed and printed in different colors, creating a 3D effect when viewed through corresponding filters. I was intrigued by how the mystery unfolded depending on the filter used.
While exploring the feasibility of implementing anaglyph on web screens, I encountered challenges due to my unfamiliarity with the term. Nonetheless, I pivoted towards a “color by numbers” concept, drawing inspiration from “Querkle,” a coloring activity based on circular designs developed by graphic designer Thomas Pavitte, who drew inspiration from logos designed using circles.
For practicality and time constraints, I chose simple images and creted them using Adobe Illustrator, layering the circles into colorable sections. Using MakeyMakey for interaction and Isadora’s Live Capture for audio cues, I facilitated engagement. Additionally, I devised a method using MakeyMakey and alligator clips for answering multiple-choice questions.
Implementing keyboard watchers, trigger values, and jump++ actors, I orchestrated transitions between scenes in the patch, ultimately unveiling the mysteries.
cycle one
Posted: March 28, 2024 Filed under: Final Project Leave a comment »For cycle one, i keep my goal simple – to explore and figure out my multiple resources and the combined possibilities of arduino (and sensors), isadora, and makeymakey.
i learned how to connect arduino with isadora, and explored touch-related sensors and actuators. I started with capacitive touch because it can be achieved with just connecting wires to the pins, and doesn’t require me to purchase extra sensors, but it turns out that the fact that it does not give analog output makes it hard to send value to isadora with the Firmata Actor. (while i did find that it could be possible to use serial communication instead of Firmata Actor, but that seems more coding, and I think that’s too much for now, i may return to this in the future). So I decided to use force sensor, flex sensor, and the servo.
I played with layering some videos together (some of the footages i collected), all of them shared something in common (an aesthetic i am looking for) – the meandering/stochastic motion of feral fringe. I tested out some parameters that would allow subtle change to the visual. Then i tried send the value from my sensor to affect the subtle changes.
some tutorials that i find helpful:
(thanks Takahiro for sharing this about Firmata in his blog post!):
https://www.instructables.com/Arduino-Installing-Standard-Firmata/
https://www.instructables.com/How-To-Use-Touch-Sensors-With-Arduino/
https://docs.arduino.cc/learn/electronics/servo-motors/
Force sensor: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/force-sensitive-resistor-hookup-guide/all
Flex sensor: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/flex-sensor-hookup-guide/all
I was also thinking about the score for audience, that supports the intention of [shared agency, haptic experience (with the wires as well), subtle sensations], and I really love the sensation of the wires dangling and twitching like tentacles ~ i would love for people to engage with it:
In pairs, one person will close eyes, the other person will guide them in the space. While roaming around in the space, eye-closed person will explore the space with touch, which then affects visuals/sounds/sensations in the space.
This source from an activity we did in Mexico, also i find another artist did something similar. i find this audiencing quite effective in the sense that, eye-closed enables that people don’t select and manipulate the object by judging its appearance or functions, which makes new “worlding” happen. And, with eyes closed, there is an extra layer of care in our touch and pace. This also resonates with what i studied in dance artist Nita Little’s theory of “chunky attention” versus “thin-sliced attention”. With eyes closed, we don’t come to recognize a thing as a chunky whole thing and assume we already know it, but we are constantly researching every bit of it as our touch goes through it. With the pair format, we are also constantly framing the “scene” for each other.
Envisioning space use for final cycle:
– in molab
– a projector (i am thinking of using my own tiny projector, because it’s light and easy to move, i probably wanna audience to play with touch/move that as well)
– space wise, i am thinking that part where the curtain track goes out (see sketch below, the light green area), but i am also flexible. with the next circles, i need to test out how to hook my wires, how long the power cable would be in order to figure out the realistic spacial design…
Pressure project 3 – sharing a wandering?
Posted: March 5, 2024 Filed under: Pressure Project 3 Leave a comment »When designing this experience in response to the prompt of “mystery is revealed”, my thought is that, I don’t want to be the one in control to reveal the mystery, but I wanna send the participants on a journey where they disclose mystery for themselves.
I am interested in what shared agency and reciprocal relationship can do. So I devised this experience where the duet have to work together to decide the journey for themselves. I am interested in haptic experience, so some trigger requires the duet to hold hand together. So the experience is co-created by both participants and some random factors:
I thought of the resource of using the green screen from zoom to carve out the human out and compose it to the video background. I think I start with thinking of using zoom quite spontaneously even without knowing how exactly I wanna use, probably because of the past three years of weekly dancing in zoom…
And the videos themselves are composed of a couple of clips that I took with my phone years ago. To me, all these clips share a kind of texture that feels visceral and has a potential of touching the unconsciousness. That’s why I choose to use these specific imagery for this project whose theme is related to mystery.
Isadora patch:
Makeymakey connection:
i kinda of appreciate the time contraints of 10 hours, it takes the pressure of me by pushing me to make quicker decisions and letting go when i was wavering between too many ideas.
Several things I bumped into but not yet figured out, and am interested in exploring further is:
– how to elicit and engage with the fragility and instability side of technology. I was noticing it intriguing about the use of a water-soaked thread as a conductor, which involves an uncertainty of how long it takes for the water to evaporate that it eventually becomes not conductive. The same goes with the use of conductive ink – after I painted it onto the plastic strap, the ink tends to break in-between easily. Also the design of water balloon part…The fragility and uncertainty here are fascinating to me, but I haven’t figured out how to more intentionally engage with it.
– another desired I had is to have the participants touching the webcam, (think about relations of visual and haptic), but I drop the idea because it is too much to incorporate here.
– and how to communicate such interaction to the audience, and how verbal or nonverbal communication have different affects.
PP3 – Scarcity & Abundance
Posted: March 4, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project Leave a comment »This project began with the idea to use a snare drum as a control event in relation to the Makey Makey device and Isadora. With the prompt of ‘a surprise is revealed’, I wanted to explore user experiences involving sharp contrasts in perspective through two parallel narratives. One narrative (‘clean path’) contains imagery suggestive of positive experiences within a culture of abundant resources. The second narrative (‘noisy path’) includes imagery often filtered out of mainline consciousness as it is a failure byproduct within the cultures of abundant resources. By striking the snare drum in accordance with an audible metronome, the user traverses a deliberate set of media objects. In photo based scenes, there is a continuum of images scaled from most to least ‘noisy’. Hitting the drum in synchronous with the metronome will enhance the apparent cleanliness of the image. While hitting off beat renders the reverse effect giving more noisy or distasteful images. In video based scenes, two videos were chosen which illustrate opposing viewpoints and similarly, the timing of drum beats alters the display of positive or negative imagery.
The first images are of random noise added to a sinusoid. A Python script was written to generate these images and an array of noise thresholds were selected to cover the variation from a pure sinusoid to absolute random noise. This serves as a symbol for the entire piece as Fourier mathematics form the basis for electrical communication systems. This theory supports that all analog and digital waveforms can be characterized by sums of sinusoids of varying frequency and amplitude. As such, all digital information (video, image, audio…) can be represented digitally in the form of these sinusoids for efficient capture, transmission, and reception. In the digital domain, often unwanted signal artifacts are captured during this process, so digital signal processing (filtering) mechanisms are incorporated to clean up the signal content. Just as filtering adjusts signal content from the binary level of media objects, it exists at higher computing levels, most notably algorithmic filtering in search engine recommendation, social media feeds, and spam detection in email inbox to name a few. Further, on the human cognitive level, societies with abundance of resources may be subjected to the filtering out of undesirable realities.
One such undesirable reality is that of consumer waste which is conceptually filtered through the out of sight, out of mind tactic of landfills. Even when in sight, such as in a litter prevalent city, the trash may be filtered out cognitively just as is done by audible ambient noise. The grocery store shopping and landfill scenes serve to illustrate this concept. The timelapse style emphasizes the speed and mechanicalness at which the actions of buying colorful rectangular food items and compressing massive trash piles occur. Within the system of food consumption, this video pair the familiar experience of filling up a cart at the grocery store with the unfamiliar afterthought of where those consumables are disposed.
The third scene takes influence from Edward Burtynsky’s photography of shipbreaking in countries like Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh in which a majority of the worlds ships and oil tankers are beached for material stripping. These countries are not abundant in metal mines and their economies are dependent on reception of ships for recyclability of iron and steel. The working conditions are highly dangerous involving toxic material exposure and regular demolition of heavy equipment which dehumanize workers and cause environmental damage. This video is contrasted by an advertisement for Carnival cruise line and a family enjoying the luxury of vacationing at sea on a massive boat containing a waterpark and small rollercoaster. This scene reveals an excessive leisure experience available to those in areas of abundance and the disposal process when these ships are no longer of use. Further emphasizing the sentiment of ‘what is one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’.
The last scene includes a series of screenshots taken from Adobe photoshop showing the digital transformation of a pregnant woman into a slim figure. Considering the human body as having an ideal form, akin to that of the pure sinusoid, manual and automated photoshop tools provide ways to ‘cleanup’ individual appearance to a desired form. With body image insecurity, obesity, and prevalence of cosmetic surgeries pervading the social consciousness of abundance societies, this scene registers the ease at which these problems can be filtered away.
The choice of the drum and metronome as a control interface is designed to reconstruct the role that conformity plays in decision making and exposure to alternate perspectives. It is suspected that most users will hit the drum on beat because that is what sounds appealing and natural. Here the metronome represents the social systems underpinning our formation of narratives around consumption and self identity. With the design of this media system, it is possible for the user to only experience positive imagery so long as they strike in phase with the metronome. But for those daring to go against the grain and strike off beat, they are greeted by a multitude of undesirable realities. It is my hope that in participating with this media system, that users realize the role that digital systems play in shaping perceptions as well as how our the style of our interactions alter the possibilities on what can be seen.
Resources used in this project:
- Makey Makey
- Snare Drum
- Copper Tape
- Drum Stick
- Isadora
- 10 Hours of time
Media Artifacts Used:
Pressure Project 2 – Escape Otherworld
Posted: February 8, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »I’ve been to Otherworld some years ago so I was excited to go back. It’s a really strange space, but that’s what’s interesting about it, especially when I was able to find patterns or “figure out” a room. There were a few rooms that drew my attention at first. One was the mush-room (really funny joke). What I found interesting in it was the cow room, which had a very Legend of Zelda puzzle in it. Basically, there are six colored levers attached to a machine that itself is attached to the cow’s utters, and there is an order in which you need to pull the levers in order to get some effect. It was interesting to see how people would solve this puzzle, if they did at all (and a lot didn’t, mostly because they didn’t stay in the room long enough to realize that anything was afoot), but there were two notable instances. Sometimes what would happen is someone would be pulling random levers and then they would pull the correct one and something different would happen. In a few cases, people just started pulling levers to see if anything would happen, which lead to finding out that if you pull the levers in a certain order they don’t make the cow angry. Through trial and error they figured out the combination and the cow did fun things.
An image of the cow doing fun things!
However, some people also noticed this panel on the back wall with lights of different colors that would come on in a certain pattern. Someone then put together that the color of the lights was the same as the color of the levers and from there they found out that the light pattern was the order of the levers, which is not something I noticed at all but was really neat.
The interesting hint light panel that I didn’t notice because I’m not a true gamer
The room I actually want to talk about though because I can’t stop thinking about it is one of the first ones that people encounter. It’s right in the beginning and it’s this plainly sci-fi looking room with a bunch of panels and buttons.
This is the panel room, I stole this image because I didn’t have any good photos of this room and I didn’t expect to be talking about it but here we are: https://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/inside-columbus-otherworld-an-immersive-choose-your-own-adventure-sci-fi-art-installation/Slideshow/12234210
At first, I wasn’t really interested in this room. For starters, the first button I pressed made all the screens display a rick roll, and I almost cried. In general, most of the panels weren’t related from what I could tell. Some of them had small games, like one had a game where you have to time pressing a button to cause a system overload. Some had videos that showed a scientist talking about Otherworld itself, which are interesting from a lore perspective but weren’t super interesting from the experience side (most people just watched them, which isn’t very interesting to describe haha). There was one panel that I saw a kid playing with that had a camera view of another room, specifically the mouth cave room, and when the button was pressed a sound effect would play like a burp. That I thought was very interesting. I tried playing with the panel myself, apparently you can change the sound effect played by turning this knob. What I wanted to know is if those sounds were being played to people inside the mouth room. Anytime one of the sound effects was played I stared intently at the panel to see if anyone would react. Unfortunately, basically no one had any sort of interesting reaction, so I couldn’t really tell if the sounds were going through. I went to the mouth cave room myself to see if I could hear anything (I probably sat in that room for like 10 minutes too), but I didn’t hear any noises. I don’t know if this was because no one was playing sounds or because the sounds aren’t being projected, but I’m like 90% certain that the sounds matter. Even if it doesn’t, people that I saw using the panel had sort of a devious way of playing, like they were messing with others in the experience.
The original room, and a little about how it works. Not super complicated all things considered.
Regardless, I started to think about this room as a sort of control room, for the whole experience really. I didn’t see any other panels in this control room that linked to other rooms, but I started to think about what it would be like if this room was connected to all the other ones and in a reverse Five Nights at Freddy’s or regular Hunger Games sort of way, if you could make different things happen in other rooms. As I was just exploring on my own, I started to see places where the room could definitely have jump-scared me in a haunted house sort of way. As I was looking through drawers in this room, I felt like this guy could have jumped out and grabbed me.
Similarly, while I was in this gothic/lovecraftian spider room, I had a chilling moment where I thought I remembered this bloke being an animatronic that moves around, but it was still. Then, when I turned around to focus on a different part of the room, I heard it move, and just as a turned around I could just barely see it move before it stopped again and never moved the entire time I was there. What if people could mess with others in these really minute ways? It would be kind of horrible, but it would be fun
it looks like a Bloodborne boss ngl, this thing scared me
The devious room where you play nasty pranks on people
I also started thinking about some of the puzzles I saw and some of the ways I saw couples collaborating in these rooms, and then a different idea came into my head. It happened while I was trying to explain what Otherworld was and one of my friends said: “It’s like an escape room except the goal isn’t to escape.” What would Otherworld function like as an escape room of some sort? The person in the control room is almost like the game master. I also remembered this strange moment where in the aforementioned spider room, the antique phone started ringing, some random guy came in, answered it (as if he knew this phone would ring), and then left. Aside from the fact that it was weird, it could be interesting to have connections between the rooms; maybe the phone is connected to the room with the bats, and you have to speak into one of their ears to communicate with the spider room phone? What if Otherworld was this Toolmaker’s paradigm fever dream where each person was put in a different room, and they had to figure out how to communicate with each other? It would be interesting to see a place like Otherworld or Meow Wolf with this alien aesthetic, but the goal is the solve some greater puzzle instead of the puzzle being an optional thing or the room interactions being disconnected.
Otherworldly Experience
Posted: February 8, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Pressure Project, Pressure Project 2 Leave a comment »This room is one of the first rooms I experienced. It is immediately after the room that Rick rolls guests and allows them to mess with other guests throughout the facility. It is a dimly lit room with three ominous human sized capsules. They all surround a giant sphere suspended in the air with what looks like wires from each of the capsules leading into it.
The capsules are really eye catching so many guests that entered the room immediately walked into them to check it out. Then they hear a noise in the pod and can see the side light up. This prompted nearly all of them to go looking for other people nearby to fill the other two pods to see what may happen. Once three people are standing in the pods They begin to flash black and white as well as the lights leading to the orb. At the same time a noise that sounds like static electricity is whirling around the room. Finally, the room goes dark and all is quiet then the guests standing in the pods are sprayed with gusts of air. Caught off guard, the guests let out a scream or flee from the container.
There is not much I would want to redesign with how the system is able to capture people’s attention and clearly convey what needs to be done to activate. So, what I would add would be some sort of fog like effect that is also ejected with the puff of air as well as maybe tone down the air pressure, but keep it spraying for longer. This would hopefully make it a bit less of a jump scare and make it seem cooler when the guest leaves the pod.
Pressure Project 2
Posted: February 7, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »Other World was quite an experience, I was intrigued from the start, there was a fractal projection surface outside of the exhibit spaces that I didn’t notice until light hit the surface and revealed the perfectly projection mapped textures on each triangular piece. I knew I was in for a treat.
I was particularly interested in the spaces that felt like a portal and infinite almost like a forest. The room that caught my attention was what I would call the infinite light forest. There were mirrors on all of the walls in the room with poles of light that were about 8 to 10 feet tall and shifted colors. There was also an ambient space like musical track playing from hidden speakers, that sparked a sense of curiosity As I took a closer look there were individual wires above connected to each light for power and signaling the light change. When I first entered the room I thought touching the poles initiated some part of the experience, as I observed, I noticed other folx thought the same. This exhibit turned out to be an ongoing light show that could seemingly go on forever.
People moved in-between the lanes of light and around the light pole fixtures. There was no particular pattern or path for one to take within this experience. I enjoyed how you were able to journey at your own pace to take in the vastness of the moody space.
I started to think about how I would reimagine this space if it were my project. I would shift the space into a digital tree forest.
First, I would change all of the light fixtures to trees and keep the mirrors for the infinite effect and add an interactive touch element to the bark that you must stay connected to, to learn facts about native trees in the state. In constructing the space I would source the energy and wires from below like a root system verses above. Second, I would shift the sound in the space to wind blowing through trees and sounds of leaves crunching under your feet. For my last augmentation of the space I would add a motion sensor to active wind/a fan as people move through the space to feel as if they are in a surreal natural environment.
Pressure Project 2: visiting the Other World
Posted: February 6, 2024 Filed under: Pressure Project 2 Leave a comment »This is the system I picked to spend time observing:
I decided to pause at this system because by the time I arrived here, it happened that some people are engaged with solving the puzzles of this interaction. I got intrigued by that. Also, I was very drawn to the design (and the non-interactive components) in the space as well – a poster on the wall indicate the connection between the nervous system and the gut (a topic fascinating to me!), and a glass window, the drawer of which can be opened, where there are many weirdly-interesting ceramic creatures.
Diagram of the system (upper)
Diagram of people interacting (lower)
People begin their experience by arriving at the space from three different directions. They first register their arrival at a new interactive system. Then some would observe the space first, touch the structure, or go directly to push a button on the glass boxes to see what may trigger. The button is the key to interaction, however, it needs to be pushed in a certain order to trigger an ultimate effect, otherwise it is just the light traveling through the channel, while some people might be satisfied by this and go on to the next one, other people are determined to figure out. There is an experimental guideline (with some words highlighted which seems to be the clues) on a wall, it is the key to solving the puzzle (the order of pushing the four buttons). After pushing the buttons in the correct order, a pattern appears on the screen, with some light effects, some people take a quick picture of the screen and go on to the next room.
Re-design the system:
What I am interested in doing is making people less goal-oriented, it seems that once people solve the puzzle, they are no longer interested in exploring the system again, or not even pay attention to the interesting set design in the room. The modification I wanna make:
– the button can be replaced with the shape of a tentacle, or something in the shape of a laboratory tool (to echo with the overall vibe)
– each time they solve the button puzzle, a different pattern would appear.
– the pattern is in the appearance of a creature in correspondence to the real object in space, and then they need to find that object, and touch it
– the touch has to be in a range of a certain pressure, for a certain length, (I wanna some more sensorial experience, rather than just a trigger – task complete.), preferably, the touch has to be completely between two people. (Does this sounds to nefarious?)
Pressure Project 2
Posted: February 5, 2024 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment »For Pressure Project 2 the assignment was to go to Other World or some place where you could interact with something. I decided to go to Other World because i had never been and was intrigued with what I was going to experience. The instructions were:
– Choose one of those rooms and take notes/ pics
– Evaluate how the interaction is happening. How do I think it works?
– Observe what people are doing and how they are interacting with it/ experiencing it
– Suggest a an EVIL or GOOD option to it (tweak the system/ twist their design)
I chose one of the first rooms I walked into and that was a room full of colorful light poles with mirrors on each wall. There may have been 50 poles in the room, all the same size that gradually changed colors. The wall being a mirror made it look like there was an infinite amount of light poles in the room. I couldn’t quite figure out the interactivity of the light poles other than people walking through the space. At first I thought there was a correlation between walking past the light poles and the colors change, but it wasn’t obvious enough for me to believe in that theory. This is my drawing of the room.
As a suggestion for this room, I have a few things.
- I would add a reactive device to the poles that can detect body heat or movement. If someone walks past that pole the color of the pole drastically changes and/or changes to white when you’re near it.
- It would be cool to add a fan to the light poles so that when you pass through a lane of poles, you feel a gust of air on your skin (I wold do this similarly with a light mist too!)
- Lastly I would add a heat and/or touch reactor to the light poles, so if you touch the light pole it gradually changes color. However when you let go of the pole it goes back to its originally light.