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Second Skin
24 Jan - 28 Jan
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Design Breif
Design a way for people to embody and enact the outer appearance of a digital avatar.
Team
Introduction
Violet, a mixed reality incarnation and a powerful liberated soul, developed by Steph Singer for healing and recovering people through immersive rave inspired us about the new future of humanity with digital avatars. The design brief pushed us to wonder how can she be embodied and inhabited by different people addressing ideas of identity, justice, healing, and liberation in a hybrid digital and physical realm.
Critiquing the human embodyiment
Everyone in the group was in love with the violet avatar but I personally argued if we really need a human-like embodiment of violet to feel liberated as a living being.
Critical reflection on liberation questioned if we should be confined within the politics of body or see ourselves as energy seeping back into the universe after death. Is liberation connected to individuality or it's a collective effort? Do scars of violence and incidents limit you from liberation and healing? Embodying violet beyond the materiality and limitations felt like a great way to liberation inspired by somatic and energetic psychology (Little, S., 2009).
(lilywhelan, 2020)
Idea generation
In conversation with a few people around, we realized how anger, screaming, talking to people and meditation are a few mediums through which people feel light. We wondered if participants could embody violet as energy and step into the journey of liberations through collective materiality or individual screaming.
"Liberation is very personal, abstraction and collectiveness can lead to a change in behaviour"
-- Audience feedback on the abstract prototype
Learning through making
We felt the feedback was very much relevant and liberation through anger should be a more personalized experience than a collective. With the use of touch designer and Kinect 2, I created another condensed humanly figurative audio-reactive particle system distorting with higher pitch sound resembling screams. I was personally facing challenges in crafting the distortion harmoniously like a blast aligning to audio but after several tries it worked.
In the meantime, our team has carefully crafted an audio narrative transcending people into the journey of liberation. I personally felt the narrative was beautifully constructed and my team did a great job in finding someone with a deep voice to record the script.
Violet Healing Palace Audio Script
Expert Feedback from Steph Singer & Tonisha Child
Anger and screams are very personal and people might not be comfortable in letting it out upfront
Happiness and playfulness can be a great way for liberation than sadness and anger
Doing unusual things collectively can be fun and a great way to engage audience
Scrutinizing design directions
The feedback session made me realize the value of audience, context and environment apart from designing critical immersive experiences. Unravelling something personal in front of 40+ people would have been hard and creating a personalized experience could make the rest of the audience feel left alone. Our team understood the fragility of the situation and we agreed to turn this into a wild, wired and playful liberation experience.
Making
The making of the experience had the choker, flaps, interactive installation and pre-recorded narration as the 3 major parts.
3d printing the choker
Firstly, keeping the time factor in mind we decided to use AirPods as a primary microphone. Later, I created a 3d model of chocker holding the AirPods on Fusion 360 and got it 3d printed with an FDM printer in Magenta coloured PLA material. It was later cleaned with chemicals and smoothened with sandpaper.
Crafting nature inspired flaps
Secondly, other members of the team designed the motion auditory experience for participants to experience their somatic movements enabled by the sound of flaps worn on their hands. It was themed to suit the context of the jungle drawing inspiration from leaves.
Refining digital interaction
Thirdly, I refined the audio reactiveness and particle behaviours for the digital incarnation of violet shown in the form of our personal and intrinsic energy. We faced bottlenecks like avoiding particle distortion from narrative sounds in the background, organizing experience to suit the Kinect 2 sensing capabilities, figuring to the best position and lighting in the environment.
Refining audio script
Finally, one of our team members reworked the script and audio recording to suit the new playful jungle liberation theme.
Jungle Theme Script Audio
Presentation
On the day of the presentation, we had 2 participants creating animal sounds and bodily actions inspired by the background narrative. The experience was carefully designed to feel liberation with the playfulness of audio-interactive and bodily affected visuals of violet.
Presentation
Feedback from audience & particpants
The experience was immersive fun and crazy pulling us to experience endlessly
It carefully embraced incidental release, triggered endorphin rush, felt safe with limitations.
Bit exclusive of the audience, with default representation & not too connected to the violet
Self critique and reflection
Within the hustle of technical and time limitations, this 1 week's project put me into a real thought of understanding digital humans as powerful warriors of social & political change than capitalistic puppets. Our mission in this project was to make people experience that they are more than their bodies, limitations and scars. I personally believed that we don't need one violet avatar in silos, rather everyone turns themselves into their own form of violet energy championing self-healing and recovery culture in society.
I felt that this critical message got lost somewhere in the playfulness of the experience and didn't really evoke the sense of liberation beyond the body with violet energy. We should have given more direct context in our narrations and could have played around with body morphism during animal sound interactions.
I envision the future of violet as a digital and physical mix incarnation, situated within a playful space, unravelling violet energy in people to heal mental trauma and health challenges with happiness.
Citations
Little, S., 2009. Somatic Sensibilities.
Image Citations
lilywhelan, A. (2020). Somatic Healing and The Energy Field. [online] Beyond Solipsism. Available at: https://postcognitivism.wordpress.com/2020/02/18/somatic-healing-and-the-energy-field/ [Accessed 11 Mar. 2022].
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