For my final project. I wanted to create an interactive room/environment that would develop and involve through the interaction of a totem with the user. For the totem, I decided to 3D print a skull that I modeled, and spraypaint it golden in order to give it a treasure-like connotation. The idea of this room would be that the user walks into a very small and dark space where there is only a black bedframe, white mattress, white sheets and pillow, and a black pedestal holding the skull totem. There would be a light shining up from the pedestal into the skull, illuminating it, and constantly triggering the light sensor placed inside of the
skull. Once the user takes the totem and moves it, the light sensor would notice the change in luminance, and it would trigger the beginning reaction of the room. A projector would then begin to fill the room with abstract cloud/smoke visuals varying in speed and color and ambient noises. There would also be an accelerometer inside the skull in order to keep track of the users movement of the totem. With more sporadic movements, the accelerometer would report back to Arduino via bluetooth and then use serial communication from Arduino to processing in order to translate the movements of the totem to further develop the visuals and sounds. The main goal was the more chaotic you move the totem, then the more chaotic and nightmare-ish the environment and visuals. It was also supposed to convey the idea that your room is your safest and most comfortable place in the world, and often times it's also where you experiences most of your struggles, demons, and nightmares. This idea is further played out, by the fact that returning the skull to the pedestal/light will not end the experience, and there is truly no way to end the experience besides a reset button controlled by the operator of the exhibit. I got this idea from a lot of my own struggles I've faced this past semester, and I wanted to use this as a bit of a creative output to express those ideas. I ran into a lot of problems during this project, and surprisingly most of them weren't directly due to the project itself. However, the most difficult parts were attempting to create a creating atmosphere that 'evolves' through coding. I went a pretty easy route and designed the .mov files myself so that they were a bit easier to work with, however it would have been cooler to use the data itself to have a more active change. I need to learn more about processing and it's capabilities, but with the summer I will have time to experiment and iterate on this design. I'd still love to try to pitch the idea to MeowWolf with a working prototype to try and impress them and snag a gig there.
Schematic:
Arduino Code:
<script src="https://gist.github.com/AlexWhaa/f6b68bee357e5121b81f689ba41de932.js"></script>
Processing Code:
<script src="https://gist.github.com/AlexWhaa/8c9353e4a0f7c9f7627568dd020dea1f.js"></script>
