Final Major Project
For my final major project, I wanted to make an interactive and immersive, room-scale experience.
It consists of four main elements:
a 360° panoramic wall depicting a forest,
a set of animations programmed using an Augmented Reality application to be displayed once viewers would point their phones towards a set portion of the mentioned wall,
a central element appropriate for the scenery,
a remotely triggered light show.
I always have been fascinated with folklore mythology, especially of the Slavic variety - since that is where my heritage comes from - and wanted to incorporate such themes into the project. At the same time, I felt apprehensive about making it completely about it. I felt that it can come off as self-centred. In the end, I decided to make it more universal and combine it with modern technology. Similarly to my other projects, I wanted modern technology to transform and complement the subject of the old mythology. To give examples of how it is being expressed, the animations depict (Slavic) mythological creatures that are being revealed using the AR technology instead of magic and similarly the light-show is being triggered and facilitated using WiFi connection and Smart lights technology instead of ancient ritual. In a less obvious example, the panoramic wall that is supposed to replace an actual forest has been made by printing a digital photograph on textile material.
I made the panorama by stacking eight overlapping photos with the help of Affinity Photo software. The final image is 10 meters wide and 2.2 meters high so I wasn’t able to upload it here effectively. This is a photo of work in progress from when I was affixing the printed martial to a 200 gsm Fabriano paper to give it structural support. For technical reasons, I had to print out the image in two parts. The printer malfunctioned a bit and apart from a slight discolouration, the bottom half ended up slightly shorter than intended which consequently caused misalignment visible particularly on the edges. I couldn’t observe it until the material has been rolled out. Fortunately, the difference isn’t critical and arguably such ‘glitch’ fits with the theme of the project. I left the wider background of this photo for a better sense of scale.
Initially, I wanted to collaborate with some students to make proper animations, but the global situation spoiled my plans. Instead, I animated selected illustration from the books “Bestiariusz Słowiański” (Slavic Bestiary) part 1 and 2 by Paweł Zych and Witold Vargas using CracyTalk Animator 3 program. I have obtained the explicit permission of the author to use the illustration for this purpose. Please mind that I am not an animator and had no prior animation experience so the end quality is not what I have initially intended. The animations are less than 10 seconds long for the sake of stability when using Artivive AR program. The background is transparent, but may be displayed as black.
This is how the AR interaction is supposed to look like. For the public exhibition, I would prepare leaflets with hints to shorten the search time.
Initially I wanted to make a fake boulder to serve as a center piece, but I couldn’t make it realistic enough so I opted instead to make a table, a scrying table to be precise.
The design is a digitized and laser-cut Sixth Pentacle of Mars from the Greater Key of Solomon. I picked it because it looks tribalistic, not too complicated and mystical. The 40cm by 40cm ‘insignia’ has been coloured with ashen wood-stain and ink and combined with a black tabletop. To better hide the fitting lines I filled them with aged copper upholstery pins. I also painted the top with a mixture of wood varnish and strontium aluminate to give it a glow-in-the-dark effect. As an additional touch, I embedded three neodymium magnets underneath the tabletop to interact with Nordic scrying runes that have been treated in similar way. The effect can be seen in the final video.
Because of the current situation I had to set up my exhibition in home. I had just enough space and not much to prop up the panorama with so it is quite uneven. In the ideal situation I would cover the floor with AstroTurf but it’s so expensive that I couldn’t justify buying it just for this occasion. To compensate for this setup I prepared some presentation videos. For additional effect I dressed up as a casino dealer to imply a link between them and fortunetellers of old.
In the light-show part of the exhibition, I intended to use Carl Orff’s “Veni,veni,venias” music -because it fits both rhythmically and thematically - and I obtained an unofficial consent from the copyright holder, but the crisis delayed their response containing the official agreement so for now, I muted the relevant part. The lights, as well as the speaker, are controlled through a WiFi connection and the triggering button is hidden under the middle copper pin.
I bought a new microphone to record this video and didn’t set it up properly so some of the audio is not the best. Videography is not my speciality but I’m learning on my mistakes. Unfortunately, the home setup was so difficult that it can’t be repeated. Needless to say, my acting skills leave a lot to be desired as well.