{"id":8948,"date":"2018-05-05T01:49:50","date_gmt":"2018-05-05T01:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=8948"},"modified":"2018-05-10T01:41:29","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T01:41:29","slug":"daydream-simulator-5000-post-mortem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/?p=8948","title":{"rendered":"[New Genres] Daydream Simulator 5000"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This project went through many iterations before it took the form that I presented at open studios on Tuesday. I knew I wanted to experiment with sound and the placement of sound in space, and I knew I wanted to create a space of interaction that felt separated somehow from the world around it. I began conceiving of the piece as different recordings of different text playing from different places in a room, which you would walk through. However, after experimenting with motion sensors, I knew I wanted to incorporate them somehow. Initially, I thought that the control would be limited to the sound following the viewer as they walked past the exhibit, but the combination of my own desire to create a more insular space and the limitations of the technology pushed me to create a piece that would\u00a0utilize hand-control. I settled on a theramin-esque setup, where the movement of the user’s hand would change the placement of the sound in the room and the volume of the sound.<\/p>\n

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Once I had formulated the way I wanted to shape the piece, the next big challenge for me was tone. I coded the motion sensor script, and then set out to create the music that would be playing for users to control. I had initially envisioned something more ambient and dark, but as I drafted song after song and tried to think about what would be fun and engaging to control, I realized that a more peaceful and cheerful tone would serve the piece better. The process of creating the final song was incredibly rewarding, and ultimately I’m happier with it than I was with any of my more melancholy drafts.<\/p>\n

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The next challenge was visual. I struggled a lot with providing visual cues of how to interact with the piece, and how to visually reward the user for interacting on top of the sonic element. I set up a projector with lights changing color to add to the tone, and beta-testers of the piece enjoyed using the projector’s light to make shadows as they controlled the music; so I moved the motion-sensor into a position that would make this more intuitive, and framed the projector screen with diagrams of different shadow puppets. In a later test, this was semi-successful, as users immediately knew how to interact with the projector; but the effect that the motion sensor was having wasn’t as clear. In my final draft, I added a visual portion of code, which allows the motion sensor to change the color on the screen as well as the sound.<\/p>\n

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This final version\u00a0debuted at Open Studios, and the addition of the visual solved a lot of problems and moved the piece along quite a bit. People were more clear on how to interact with the piece and how they were affecting it. This extra technical element posed its own problems: the size and placement of the Leap made the area of interaction smaller than people expected it to be, and the fact that I had only programmed for one hand input at a time meant that sometimes the program froze or or didn’t respond when there was more than one hand in the area of the Leap.<\/p>\n

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Overall the project was very successful. People enjoyed interacting with it and found it intuitive and evocative, particularly commenting on the relaxed yet playful nature of the piece. If I were to rework this piece in the future, I have some ideas about reworks and fine-tuning, but overall I’m very satisfied with the end result.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This project went through many iterations before it took the form that I presented at open studios on Tuesday. I knew I wanted to experiment with sound and the placement of sound in space, and I knew I wanted to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[365],"tags":[341,385],"class_list":["post-8948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-genres-2","tag-new-genres","tag-interactive-art","wpcat-365-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8948"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9227,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8948\/revisions\/9227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/astoryisnotatree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}