Illustration
Identity
Window into a world
process:
Merel and I decided to team up for this assignment, since we had overlapping concepts and ideas around childhood and nostalgia. Our concept was set in stone from the start, yet we experimented allot!
We wanted this project to be interactive so we looked at different kinds of options. We played around using a Kinect, but we didn't have visuals to interact with yet.When Merel and I were ideating on visuals through moodboarding and experimentations, the main visual for our project was born. We early on agreed we wanted the walls of our fort to be colorful and we wanted people to be able to alter it, so we decided on colorful moving particles.
It worked, but we wanted our fort to have two distinct phases; the "adult phase" and the "innerchild phase". The adult phase is essentially the same as the kid one, just grey and distorted, signifying that the innerchild is still there but hidden away.
Now we have the two visuals we want, but how can we trigger the transition from the one to the other? During one of our first feedback sessions, people have said that the fort puts the user in a playful position: crawling. So we were thinking of different playful ways to trigger the visuals. One of the first options was that we could use plushies with NFC tags (not really knowing what Touchdesigner all had in store), The second one was using playful gestures, which was doable since I was already experimenting with Mediapipe in my free time. Since we wanted to give people a chance to look back on childhood, We came up with the funny gesture that is looking through binoculars.We achieved to switch between the visuals through handtracking.
Because it is an audiovisual design, we also needed to find out what kind of audio to use for our project. Our peers asked us what an innerchild sounds like to us and so we decided to make two playlists and analysed them all based on certain criterai such as “this makes me nostalgic” “this makes me feel a bit blue” this makes me feel happy and joyful” etc. We wanted to create our own audio for the project, but couldn't do it in the mean time. So we chose two songs that we thought fit our vibe best.
During the mini expo we got a lot of lovely compliments from our peers and teachers and some useful feedback.The main thing we were struggling from the beginning were the instructions. We thought it would be fun to give out clues in the given context, by drawing them and kind of making a little puzzle out of it, but we quickly figured out that that doesn't work out and that it even took away from the experience.Something else we stumbled across is that the environment we created isn't really inclusive to every age group. For example the decor represented our childhood but not the one from people 10 years older than us for example.Therefore the NFT idea would’ve given us more opportunities to create a series of environments that scream “this is my childhood”.
It was exciting to work on this project with Merel. Throughout the process, our friendship grew and we developed a real appreciation for each other’s ideas. It felt like the first big project we truly got to shape ourselves.Something personal that allowed us to put our own identity into the minor. The work flowed naturally, and it quickly became the thing I looked forward to most whenever I sat down at my desk.
Because we both care so much about this project, we’re ambitious about completing our full vision in the final months of the minor. Right now, it’s still a work in progress. For example, we analyzed playlists and sound references to understand the type of audio we want, but we haven’t yet had the chance to create our own sound design.
One of our first concepts was to use plushies to trigger the visuals, and we still want to implement that. The idea is to generate different kinds of visuals for different plushies in order to create a sense of inclusivity. Our hypothesis is that people will naturally reach for a plush that resembles the ones they had in childhood, allowing us to personalize the experience even more and deepen that feeling of nostalgia.
https://www.pinterest.com/maytemeiresonne/window-in-a-world/
Playlists: