We had almost reached midway in our project. During the last two weeks, we had attempted to identify the scope of design interventions that we could make using the available digital technologies. Although we were successful at experimenting with a few creative solutions, a theme hadn’t been finalised yet. Two questions that became extremely important to answer at this point were:
a.) What collection of the V&A had to be tackled?
b.) Who would be the target users?
After a day off, we convened with renewed energy for another intensive sprint. On Saturday, the common goal of our discussion was to select a theme with relevant collections for which we could design immersive interactions. We thought back to the reading done during this week’s seminar by Audre Lorde called as ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. It dealt with the subject of women empowerment and the struggle against systematic oppression functioning at various levels. Extracting the essence from that article, we decided to inculcate ‘cultural confidence’ in the work we were doing for a universal museum such as the V&A. Being of Asian origin, the four of us grew inspired to touch on the South-East Asian collection, including Chinese and Indian collections besides the others. Ines and Svaney produced a list containing the collections of Gongbi silk painting, Chinoiserie style wallpapers, Jogakbo Korean patwchwork, etc., and started thinking about suitable interactions. It dawned on us that these countries had been linked to a common route in the ancient time and that the collections could studied further for similarities between them as the Silk Road was a major conduit for trade between the East and West.
On the other hand, I discovered a very interesting collection featuring Bollywood posters from India for over the last 100 years. Immediately, I became excited to see my favourite actors in the movie posters from the 90s, rendered in flamboyant colours and typography. This provoked an idea instantly, that of bringing the posters to life. Not only would they be set in motion, but also dynamically react to people’s gestures detected on a webcam. Imagine Amitabh Bachan (all time hero) mimicking dance moves onscreen as performed by a person in real time. “Ungli pe naach nacha diya” is a befitting Hindi idiom for this situation, meaning to have someone other dance (act) according to one’s whims at the slightest effort of raising a finger. This activity is a reversal of what happens in the popular gameplay of Just Dance, where players mirror the moves performed by actors onscreen.
To give a common premise to these different kinds of interactions being performed on separate collections, we recollected on the concept of escape rooms. Now, with this development we moved in a new direction altogether, that of thinking about a virtual environment where the visitor(s) would need to navigate collections thoroughly in order to discover clues so that they could unlock the room. Hence the purpose was revised to give a context to the interactions we had thought of earlier by habituating them under the same roof.
In the Tuesday tutorial with John, we presented our ideas and discussed the background of escape rooms. He complimented us on the idea of embodying experience in role-play with the Bollywood posters. For exploring the notion of escape rooms, he grew extremely keen and encouraged us to look for possibilities. Thankfully the one platform that he recommended to us, Mozilla Hubs, was actually greatly compatible to our requirement. It is a virtual space that can be shared by any number of people to host a conference or share images and 3D models at. The best part: it runs on web browser and doesn’t require an app or software installation.
We knew we were heading into an uncharted territory of building a 3D virtual space from scratch which was a humungous task, however our enthusiasm ousted the skepticism. Instead, we got straight onto the task of skill management. Ines drew out a table for listing out the skills classified according to different expertise for the all four of us. This was a smart initiative as it helped us to organise ourselves effectively in the project work for the upcoming weeks.
In the limited time we had in hand, it was recognised that writing a new code for a dynamic motion poster was not feasible and so we needed to piggyback on existing codes. Therefore, Sylvester hunted libraries for motion-detecting samples and found one from @bensonruan. I looked into the collection of musical instruments from India and brought my attention to observing the Tabla, a pair of twin hand drums. Its 3D model was used to replace the electrical drums in the sample above. The interaction: movement of tapping on the surface of Tabla will be detected through a webcam producing the corresponding sounds which vary according to position and pressure of the stroke.
Meanwhile, Svaney and Ines started refurbishing the environment of a school into escape rooms in Mozilla Hubs. With the help of a friend, they were able to place the Table interaction feature inside a classroom.
Thursday arrived quickly when we had to deliver a mid term presentation. We showed a live demo of walking through the virtual escape rooms on Hubs embedded with one sample of embodied interaction. Max, Giada, Vanessa, Tatiana and Sebastian were intrigued with the Tabla playing by detecting motion. Manali and Cat also enjoyed it but doubted the learning outcome.
Jack was thrilled by the amount of work we had done in a short span of time. He was impressed by our presentation as the intent was clearly communicated. Also, he was interested to see the geographic look of the collections and the interrelationship between them. He pressed upon us two important questions regarding 1.) deciding a target user and 2.) defining the look of the rooms to represent the countries in focus.
John and Alaistair furthered this train of thought by asking us to enhance spatial design and take advantage of digital affordances.
We were humbled by the extensive feedback given by our tutors, Jack and the classmates as it provided us with a clear vision of how to approach our project in the coming weeks. Our immediate consideration was to simulate an environment reflecting the Silk Road and choose target audience for the same.
