{"id":5993,"date":"2026-05-08T08:07:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/?p=5993"},"modified":"2026-05-08T08:47:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:47:55","slug":"cycle-2-%d9%85%db%81%d9%85%d8%a7%d9%86-mehmaan-the-guest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/?p=5993","title":{"rendered":"Cycle 2: \u0645\u06c1\u0645\u0627\u0646 &#8211; Mehmaan (The Guest)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"720\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1280 \/ 720;\" width=\"1280\" controls src=\"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Video-Project-5-1.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>After the unsuccessful debut of my Cycle 1 project, where I had built a conversational system and dressed it in fancy spatial experience clothes. I realized I was trying to do too much and jumping in too quick into the technicalities of what was at the time my very broad area of research with, without having alot of knowledge of the area. Just for reference: my area of research interest is designing an AI companionship experience which embodies the aspects of companionship that a text-based companion would not &#8211; especially for South Asian adults experiencing loneliness. So, for the next cycles, I thought it would be great if I strip my goals down to creating an experience that achieves part of it. So, I pivoted to creating an embodied experience where the space acknowledges you, with a flair of South Asian culture. In short: I just needed a body in a space and something the space could do in response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, the concept became Mehmaan. Mehmaan means guest in Urdu. Mehman-nawazi (the hospitality, care, and honoring of the guest) is a specific South Asian, or in my case, the Pakistani cultural practice. I translated that into a spatial experience where the host (the space) does all the work. The guests (the users) don&#8217;t have to operate or figure out anything. They are just received and honored. That is the opposite of every interactive experience I have ever used, but it felt like the right thing to create after Cycle 1 where the user was expected to do all the labor of making the system work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>TouchDesigner<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Orbecc depth camera for body\/blob detection<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>My trusty laptop (I have not named her yet)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The song &#8220;Mehmaan&#8221; -&gt; <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/mtIjUH4aQSA?si=mkKMoMGcJ28JOHrX\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/mtIjUH4aQSA?si=mkKMoMGcJ28JOHrX<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Top down projector, and <strong>THE <\/strong>rug<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Projection screen<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Motion Lab<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Tripod mounted Camera<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The score<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The user steps into a dimly projected floor of Pakistani geometric patterns (truck art). As the user enters, the space becomes more alive: the projections get brighter, and music begins playing. On the large projection screen in front of the user, flower petals fall and respond to the movements of the user. So, not deliberately doing anything &#8211; the space just blooms because someone is in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Process<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Blob detection from the Orbecc signaled the start of the experience: blob detected -> song starts, floor pattern brightens. No blob, no experience. The space is dormant until you enter it. The projector screen shows slowly falling petals in the background throughout the experience. The floor pattern is a sequence of Pakistani truck art motifs animated with beat detection from the song. I used a mirror top so that the pattern dances with the music. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The optical flow for the petal- particle effect interaction was the most fun part to build. You move, and the petals physically respond to your body. It&#8217;s immediately perceptible without any detailed instructions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What Worked, What Didn&#8217;t, What I Learned<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What worked:<\/strong> Almost everything that I hoped to, which was great! The feedback told me the piece was very fun and made people want to dance, which was not the plan but it felt right. The cultural aspects like the patterns and the song was immediately warm rather than alienating even to people unfamiliar with it. The optical flow interaction was intuitive enough that people discovered it themselves, which is exactly what I was going for after Cycle 1 where nothing was intuitive. The experience also became very social. It started with everyone taking turns to it turning into a dance-playground for everyone!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1080\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1920 \/ 1080;\" width=\"1920\" controls src=\"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Video-Project-6.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What I learned:<\/strong> the performative discomfort of being alone in front of a system watching you is a design problem, not a personality problem. The system needed to give people something of themselves back. They needed to see that they were inside it, not just in front of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After the unsuccessful debut of my Cycle 1 project, where I had built a conversational system and dressed it in fancy spatial experience clothes. I realized I was trying to do too much and jumping in too quick into the technicalities of what was at the time my very broad area of research with, without [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5993"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6002,"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5993\/revisions\/6002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dems.asc.ohio-state.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}