Shanting Hou

HOUSE OF THOUGHTS

Simple narrative description

There is a small glass box with a model of a living room inside. The living room has three big windows, and you can see everything in the room through them. At first, the room is lit with a soft blue light. In front of the box, there is a keyboard.

When you press the “S” key on the keyboard, the blue light changes to a warm, yellowish light, like sunlight. If you type on the keyboard, the words you type show up on a little screen inside the room. As you keep typing, the light in the room slowly turns red, and a mist starts to appear, filling up the space.

If you stop typing, the mist fades away, and the light slowly changes back to the soft, yellowish light. After about 30 seconds, the yellow light turns back to the blue light, just like it was in the beginning. Then the room is ready for you to use again.

Progress images

Project Reflection

This project made me realize how the physical materials of a piece can shape people’s experiences with it. By making stress the central theme, I noticed that people’s sensitivity to stress became more noticeable. For example, using a keyboard as the way for people to “input” or share their stress also turns it into a tool that causes stress, which creates an effect that feels both interesting and a little contradictory. I’m not sure if that’s what I intended.

My goal was to create a piece that works as a metaphor for stress—something that amplifies how stress impacts the environment around us. However, I realized that the red light and the keyboard might actually add stress to the experience, making it harder for people to step back and reflect on the metaphor itself. This wasn’t my original goal, as I didn’t set out to make something that reduces stress, but now I wonder if the added stress distracts from the message.

At the same time, though, people are experiencing the concept of stress directly through the piece, which means they’re engaging with the idea I wanted to explore. That part feels like a success. I’m still figuring out how I feel about this balance between creating an experience that stresses people and one that helps them think about stress in a more reflective way.

Process Reflection

One of the main challenges was figuring out how to assemble and disassemble the structure in a way that is both easy and secure. Building the entire structure and designing its appearance required careful planning and attention to detail. Another difficulty was coding the screen to function like a real computer, allowing users to delete and scroll as they type, which added complexity to the interaction design.

I discovered that mist can behave in a way similar to LED lights, creating striking visual effects. Even though the mist isn’t mono-frequency light, different colors can still have a strong impact, influencing emotions and perceptions in meaningful ways. I also learned that there are many ways to approach assembling a structure and exploring different methods early on could make the process smoother in future projects. Additionally, combining texture, light, and reflection leads to unique effects, such as using light on a white surface to make it appear softer and more natural.

Code Submission

Exhibition Shots