Theme
Play and sound
For this week's theme, I made an interactive project that creates sound by detecting motion movements through the camera lens using touchdesigner.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11s55b_Vkm3vWasZ_ybagRuhxL33DJafu?usp=sharing
The first prototype was designed where the interaction would only happen at one side of the screen. However, when I was playing, it felt as if the interaction was too limited to one hand. I wanted the interaction to be more spaced out where the players would have to stretch out a bit more to play with the project.
The second prototype was done where the interaction was spaced up on the top part of the screen. It was done so that the player would have more freedom of movement when interacting with the project. I also added a bit more variation of sounds to the interactions so that the players could have a longer play-time with the project.
I used touchdesigner as my app of choice for this week's project. The project was inspired by my last week's projects of designing an interactive experience in touchdesigner. My idea for this project was to design an open-ended play experience where the players would be able to piece together into something new through the experience. Rather than relating this with musical instruments, I choose to play with the surrounding atmospheric sounds as it was able to create more immersion for the players.
One of the inspirations for this project was an experiment called keyboard by Google Creative lab. It was an experiment which tracks the player's face to create a musical keyboard. Looking at the work inspires me to create sound through movement. Another work that inspired me was from the artist Virbert Thio. I found his work was mostly on creating music through players' interaction to merge music samples into one. His work, Lo-Fi Player, was a huge inspiration for me during the creation of this week's project.
Method
I started with setting up locations and areas of detections for the movements by using the crop TOP and a motion sensing object that would detect the area of movement. The area was highlighted and linked so that every time movement was detected within the box, sound and visual feedback will be shown.
When I was first doing the prototype playtest with my housemate, they told me that by having interactions all in one area, it limits the interaction of the players and it gets boring pretty fast. After the second prototype, they told me that the playability of the project has greatly increased. I found it interesting when they told me that the work was interesting if played with two players where the players would have to work together to create the atmospheric sound.
Motion detection : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuGjny9J-Sg
By Yee Jing Kan
Email Yee Jing Kan
Published On: 15/09/2021