Personal Statement
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -Viktor FranklFascinated by Literary Nonsense, which has an beyond-our-grasp inscrutable logic, I found Dreamextremely interesting. Dynamic, blur, nonsense, surreal, and easy to forget. Dream is an exciting world where any unexpected transition of scene, characters, and objects all seem to be normal, but it’s a personal, night-time-only world. Is it possible to replicate the experience of dreaming? Is it possible to change the world with different responses? Is it possible to share a personal dream? I want to build an journey to mimic the dream, where users can create their world based on their response to the stimulus, and enjoy the combination of rare objects and unexpected events.
Storyboard
Background
The visual and often illogical aspects of dreams make them perfect for out-of-the-box thinking stimulus, which is helpful to figure out some puzzles in life.
Audience
Whoever wants to dream in daytime, and interests in adding some weird stimulus into daily life.
User Scenario
User is invited to experience the journey. Sitting down first, user will be helped by me to put on the slippers(which are the foot-controller), headphone with microphone, and Oculus Rift.Then user need to follow the instructions from headphone, fronting the illogical events, and find the way to complete the journey, achieving the Finale.
Implementation
Using Oculus Rift, Three.js, Node.js, WebRTC, Arduino, and vibration motor to build an immersive surreal journey, lived on web.Mare is composed of Intro, the Forest, the Surreal, and the Glitch, and if users show enough strength throughout the journey, they might reach the hidden layer of dream, the Finale.
Conclusion
I learned it’s extremely challenging to make a playable game. Interactions have to be designed carefully to suit different response and what I assume to be normal is different from others most of the time.
References
Since I forget all the time.
SO. Here’s the report of my { brain } automata making process.
First, prototype with cardboard. Laser cut 11 pieces of pentagons, and stick them together with my favorite tool – duck tapes.
And endless steel wire bending.
Laser Cut transparent 3/16″ acrylic and build into dodecahedron with hinges and machine screws.
And mount the motor my pulley system!
Things all sound easy but there are actually lot of painful struggling –>
- Pre drilling hole on small wood tube is hard. Crack easily.
- Rope has to be trimmed neatly or it will stuck with wires.
- Bad binding with wire and motor shaft. Asked magical Ben Light, ordered a shaft coupler to connect wire and DC motor.
- Have to relocation the motor. Should leave more space for the shaft side.
- Friction debugging nightmare…
SO. I’m really concerned about the possibility of finishing it before Final…. but whatever, I’ll keep working on it :DDDDD
For the 3rd Stupid Shit No One Needs And Terrible Ideas Hackathon, I made three fonts:
- Stupid.ttf
- ReallyStupid.ttf
- Laura.ttf
Here to download the package and it’s of course free to use!
The idea for each one is:
- Hand tracing the most expensive font in the world. If user likes it, user will eventually buy the most expensive font in the world.
- A really stupid font that when user types “I’m smart”, it shows “I’m stupid.” And also exchange + / -, , / ., { / }, crossed out $ and ∞, etc.
- For presenting artistic proposal for various projects. From now on, I don’t have to hand trace Times New Roman anymore.
For Mare, I want to use audio as instructions to let users know what they should do in “the world”. And it’s my pleasure to have lovely Kate Godwin to be my instructor to comfort and lead users the way 😀
Here are some draft scripts of instructions. Basic lines to insert into Mare with Web Audio API to test with.
- Hmm… It’s 3 AM. Why are you here, standing in black instead of being in bed?
- Are you sure you are awake?
- Hey (different kinds of)
- You think you’re not sleeping.
- Are you sure?
- Please close your eyes. / Do you mind closing your eyes?
- Calm down.
- Don’t be afraid.
- Just do as I do.
- Louder?
- See. Very easy.
- ~ small singing 🙂 ~
- Just let go.
The Dream.
(Click to enter the official blog) It’s going to happen. Woohoo.
What will be involved?
- Three.js
- Web Audio API
- Oculus Rift
- Foot controller(Arduino + Node.js)
- Special thanks to The Nature of Code by Daniel Shiffman
