More Interactive Media Work
Click to jump to a project: Wearable Electronic | See.Move.Hear. | Sound of the Wisps VR Game |
Wearable Electronic
In Harmony
Alongside Gino Ceresia, I designed a wearable electronic. The wearable is a black cardigan sweater that sends serial data over a private wireless network.
There are accelerometers built into the sleeves. The sweater also has conductive fabric sewn into the left wrist and right elbow. This makes it possible to trigger events by touching the wrist to the elbow.
Among other integrated hardware, the sweater used an XBee board,
Teensy microcontrollers, and LilyPad accelerometers. It was funded by a GPSA JumpStart Grant.
See.Move.Hear.
Two paintings of subway maps were made with conductive ink for See.Move.Hear. The conductive ink was connected to an Arduino, making the paintings large capacitive sensors. I would classify these paintings more as interactive sound objects than NIMEs. My role for this project was sound designer via Max/MSP programming. I did not write the code for the Arduino, design the NIME, or work with the hardware.
These interactive paintings were shown at the Phoenix Art Museum in May 2017 as part of their Free Family Weekend event. Click here to see photos. Credits for this work can be seen at the end of the video above.
Sound of the Wisps VR Game
Sound of the Wisps was an unreleased VR edutainment video game. In the game, each glowing sphere (we called them "wisps") plays music and dances. The audio was spatialized so that walking towards a wisp would their part of the music clearer to the player. Interaction mechanics were being developed so that users could reach out to the wisps and trigger randomly selected hidden elements of the music.
For this game, I served as creative director, storyboard artist, animation implementer, music composer, and sound designer. Sound of the Wisps was demoed at the 2017 VR for Good Summit.
As I do not own the copyright, I cannot show game footage. I can, however, show the above screenshots.
Large Interactive Puzzle Pieces
I collaborated with painter Amelia Boon to create large-sized puzzle pieces. I put accelerometers in them so that they'd create sound upon being moved. I also handled the Max programming.
When the boxes are stacked properly, they form the neurodiversity symbol on one side and Tetris-looking pieces on the other. This suggests looking at intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) as a form of diversity, rather than as a puzzle to be solved.
In Harmony (more info)
As stated on my home page, In Harmony was an interactive sound installation housed inside a geodesic dome. Sitting in the middle of the dome was a table with a clear surface and a webcam at its base. Museum visitors moved "game pieces" across the table to activate sound for 10 speakers and lighting behavior for LED lights. They could control the sound's spatialization, filters, volume faders, and trigger hidden sounds.
This piece was commissioned by the IDEA Museum. It was open to the public from June 2018 until November 2019. Above is a collection of photos documenting the making of the installation.