2 Project: "Spacing Out"

   SPACING OUT   

 Inside a daydreamer's personal headspace 

(This project was made by Peng Song, Veerle van Reisen and me)

We have to wear masks from June 1st? YES, as you can see (figure 1) we are taking it very seriously and are definitely protected from the covid-19 virus in our new VR head mount. JK, please follow the RIVM guidelines and stay safe & healthy <3

Click the video to watch our end-result. Wanna know more? Scroll down to read.

 CONCEPT 

Our project takes the theme SPACE quite literally and figuratively onto a digital yet physical experience. 

One's personal headspace is the smallest in size yet largest in imagination spatial area. Especially nowadays, when we get so sensory overloaded with urbanisation, technology and this pandemic, I think it's good to be able to "disappear" with your head for a moment.

The 360 degrees VR bowl-shaped helmet offers an individual room for contemplation, reflection, and provides a certain sense of relieve. The installation is made to visually and functionally counterattack all chaos; to daydream if you will. Generally, the phrase Spacing Out implies that you are not in the moment, and your thoughts are elsewhere. The highest form of spacing out is being stoned (smoking marijuana) where at its weirdest point the shape of circles become the most interesting you've ever seen and everything around you starts to move towards or away from you. We wanted to play off of this concept, and we're also inspired by the responsive environments by Myron Krueger. 

We've seen examples of interactive art moving according to the beat of the music, but we're taking this to the next level making it up-close and personal. The user can choose his/her preferred song and the art will move accordingly. While you have the experience of spacing out inside the head mount, the rest of the audience can also view the dancing circles and your bodily movements (tracked real-time by a drone camera) on the outside of the bowl-dome. They can look into your thoughts if you will.

If the user chooses to physically move and walk in a different lane, for example, then a distance sensor picks that up and changes the mood from calm to more upbeat. This causes for a different experience, still the user can choose to walk back to other lanes and experiment with the different moods.

Most interesting about this project, is that it doesn't need much of an explanation. The concept behind it is immediately understood when one starts to interact with the installation. It is big, obnoxious and quite literally makes you look like an alien from SPACE which will evoke the audience to look under/inside it and space out.

 TECHNICALITIES 

In our code, we mainly used three mechanisms to realize the functions we mentioned above. Firstly, we simulated a sound wave which you could see from many music apps while you are playing music. It was formed by ten hollow rectangles of which one of the edges could go up or down, following the rhythm of music. Secondly, we used several circles that could move horizontally, vertically or along the z-axis. Circles will move automatically on a settled path without musical stimuli, while with music, the size of circles would change with the music. Finally, we added a 'mosaic board', of which the color and size of every small circle was controlled by the brightness value on each pixel of the image the camera captured. It is on a basis of real-time feedback, which means that every movement you make in front of the camera could be reflected on the mosaic image you would see on the embedded screen of your helmet.

Hardware:

- Selfmade bowl shaped VR head mount

Software:

- Click here for the openFrameworks code files

 References: 

Lewis Lepton, 2019, openFrameworks Tutorial Series 047, 061 and 069 on Youtube.

Sounds used:

宗次郎 - いつも何度でも

Bodies - Drowning Pool 

 THANK YOU! IF INTERESTED, CONTACT US, OR LEAVE A COMMENT DOWN BELOW!