Myself and producers Collusion recently tested The Multitude at Cambridge Junction in preparation for exhibition in late June.
Cambridge Junction
The installation requires a technically demanding set-up with multiple screens, speakers and programmable lights.
Routing leads
Checking positioning
We had a couple of technical glitches, as to be expected, but managed to do a few run throughs with testers in the late afternoon.
Our very first testers!More testersThese two should know what they’re doing (artist and producer)
Generally, the installation worked well, but there are some tweaks to be made, as to be expected.
Some of the voices need to be re-scripted slightly and re-recorded
The sound design generally works although needs to be completed
The aesthetics need developing more for some scenes
Object placement needs to be improved to make the most out of the 3 screen set up
The core interactions require minor tweaking
Secondary interactions need to be added to give players something to do during the character introductions
There is actually quite a long list of minor tasks that need to be completed in the coming weeks, the above are just the highlights based on user feedback.
A side panel from the Air Elemental scene, one of the more visually resolved scenes.
It’s been a while since I last posted about the Vision Mixers project, not least because of two intervening lockdowns in England and general Covid-19 uncertainty. Despite all this and as well as a very busy start to this academic year, I have been progressing steadily with project development.
The good news is that the project, now known as ‘The Multitude’, has just been awarded an Arts Council England grant to support further development, testing and exhibition. This is obviously a welcome development and means that the work will be shown in both Cambridge, Norwich and potentially another city over the coming months.
So, the general aim of the project is to create a ‘playable experience’ for two, lasting 15-20 minutes, where the players step through a series of interactive scenarios. The experience is framed by a narrative construct that pits the players against ‘a demon’ that has recently cursed humanity, an act allegorical to the current pandemic crisis. Part of my interest in the narrative component comes from the idea of myth making, particularly in the face of danger and crisis. I was moved by the excellent Fairy-Tale Virus by Sabrina Orah Mark, published in the Paris Review, to think about how a modern fairy tale might be constructed to help mediate the current crisis.
The 1954 film Godzilla is an example of a modern fairy tale (they’re often violent and feature monsters!) that was developed in the aftermath of the atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier.
In The Multitude, the players cannot defeat the evil demon directly and must instead enlist the help of the four ‘elementals’: Earth, Water, Fire and Air. By fulfilling a task for each of the elementals, which forms the basis of player interaction for each scene, the players hope to awaken a sleeping army of ancient warriors known as ‘the multitude’, hence the name.
The research aims of the project have now been tweaked slightly. They are to investigate:
the nature of agency and how this is mediated through performative interaction
the mechanics of co-interaction
non-contact interaction design, especially in the context of the current Covid-19 crisis
the use of narrative to frame interactive experience
The research methodology is essentially to make the initial version of the work, conduct a round of early stage usability testing, iterate and then conduct more extensive audience testing at each exhibition opportunity. Usability testing will cover the nuts and bolts of interaction design and hopefully identify any significant problem areas. Audience testing will gauge sentiment and reaction, looking at for example, the success or otherwise of the narrative-interaction mix.
The project is quite sizeable already and will ultimately amount to many thousand lines of code written. A significant research output will be a technical review, but this will be framed within the context of interaction design rather than the discipline of computer programming. Coding is a means to an end in this case! For information purposes: the platform is Unity and interaction is achieved through the Microsoft Kinect for Windows.
This video gives an overview of the development work completed until November 2020.
I am pleased to be working with Cambridge-based art tech producers, Collusion, on a new interactive installation to be exhibited in Cambridge in late 2020. The venue will hopefully be Sook Cambridge.
Sook is an ‘adaptive retail space’ that can be easily customised to suit typical retail media requirements and booked by the hour. They have also experimented with hosting more artsy events. Sook at the Grafton Centre, Cambridge, features a number of grouped screens and addressible lighting. It’s the perfect environment for immersive audio-visual content, but naturally there are issues of interoperability to be addressed when installing a bespoke system that features realtime interaction.
The original project elevator pitch was “a social distancing compatible, two-person installation that makes use of whole-body interaction to explore inter-personal energies and connections within a 360° audio-visual environment”.
Early mock-up.
Since acceptance of the initial proposal, this project has already come a long way with writer, artist and multi-talented creative person Anna Brownsted joining to help develop narrative elements. Anna, myself plus Rachel Drury and Rich Hall from Collusion, all took part in a socially-distanced residency at Cambridge Junction in early August in order to get things moving.
There is a significant creative concept, currently in development, that will drive all narrative components and frame the interactions. I’ll write some more about this in due course, but for now will focus on documenting the residency and discussing key intentions for the project. I should add that this project is part of my ongoing research inquiry into gestural and embodied interaction within public-facing art. Non-technical areas of knowledge that I seek to develop are:
the nature of agency within public space and how this is mediated through performative interaction
the mechanics of co-interaction, especially the compete-callaborate axis
non-contact interaction design, especially in the context of the current Covid-19 crisis
the use of narrative to frame interactive experience
The project involves a relatively complex technical set-up with a single Kinect and host computer driving multiple screens and eventually surround audio and lighting, via DMX. The Kinect (v2) runs through Unity and allows pretty robust skeleton tracking, therefore providing the foundation for full-body interactive gestures. I will cover technical aspects more fully at a later date, but of course, expect there to be much learning in this area.
Here are a few photos and a video that illustrate the prototypes that were developed and tested during the residency.
Simple visualisation of users and movement of hands.When the hands move faster, fireballs are produced!Lots of fireballs produced by lots of movement.Testing a user duplication routine.Picking up ‘leaves’, testing in Sook.
The video shows the fireball mechanic being tested at Sook.
The residency was massively informative in terms of validating the core interactions and kick-starting the project, especially by forming the team. It was a refreshing novelty to work in the same room as others after lockdown, even if we were santising left, right and centre! We also established some key technical parameters. It’s a really exciting, although slightly daunting project, especially as it runs in parallel with my full-time teaching responsibilities! More updates soon.
