Yunshan Jiang

After showing my presentation, I got a lot of encouragement from my classmates, Sarah and guests. I have improved myself both technically and research ability. I also saw many innovative ideas from others. 

My plans for summer semester:

1. Improve the environment: I will create neuron like environment so that the creatures can flying along with the line in the neural network.
2. Finish all emotion creatures: I will finish the behaviour of “wrong view” and “pride” creatures.
3. I will modify and improve the looking of creatures by making more forms of arm and tail. Also I will improve the materials. 
4. I will change or improve the render effect and code in order to improve the efficiency of the thesis.
5. I will add background audio and add different sounds for creatures.
6. I will add VR interaction so that users can somehow control or change the movement of creatures. Maybe I will allow users draw neural network in the environment. 

I am so glad to have my first meeting with David Lobser. He gave me so many insightful ideas that I never thought before. At the beginning, I introduced my background and manifest my prototype. First, my idea was user observes the ecosystem. He gave me different direction of user interaction. He said user can perform different emotions(chopping, hitting, etc) to corresponding emotion creatures in order to turn the bad emotion be harmonious. This will be easier for user to gain and translate the information. Otherwise, if I keep my original  concept, He suggested me think about what is the attraction of each emotion. Second, he gave me some ideas of the looking of creature(wearing mask, branch, etc). Last, he asked me to write a reference stack which contain the style, mood(per emotion), technique, shape, etc that I want to use. Except the discussion about my thesis’ content, he also talked the purpose of my thesis. If I want it to be my portfolio project, I need to show off my skill or creativity as much as possible. I also asked him about career suggestion and my confusion about how to be a creative programming artist, and he answered me that as an artist, creativity is very important so to some extend, i can spend more time on thinking about creative concept rather than digging into the math or algorithm. Overall, This meeting it is super helpful for me and I am really grateful for David’s suggestions. 

For this meeting, I showed my unfinished wandering creature to my group mate. Elizabeth showed her research and experiment, also Yueqing presented her 3d character animation. Danni gave me suggestion that the background of thesis could be more creative rather than monochromatic. I can look for more references and gain more ideas.

During the meeting with Sarah, I talked about my process and further plan. First,  I said my world space size would be 25 * 25 * 25 meter in Unity, she recommend me to scale down to 10 * 10 * 10 size. Second, I told Sarah my thesis would not be linear, which means it will have no ending. I want to keep the ecosystem balance so creatures will be dead and regenerated. Third, we discussed the VR interaction. I wanted to use the joystick to move users, however, Sarah didn’t recommend me to do that cause it will really make users dizzy. The easiest solution would be let users moving toward the camera’s looking direction. Last, Sarah suggested me just describe what is the manifestation of my thesis rather than narrate the detail and logic during the show-a-thing show, because people will not care about the development details and they will not quite understand them straightway.

First of all, thanks every people who came to see my proposal and gave valuable feedbacks. Overall, they gave me positive feedbacks and it looks like my proposal’s concept is clear and interesting enough. However, they pointed out something that I need to think about more for my thesis’ future development. 

1. Emotion can be a subjective that can be understood by different culture, ethnic, age, etc. Therefore, when I do more research, I need to consider the universality about emotion states although “six root delusions” theory is easy to be accepted and acknowledged by different group of people. 
2. The thesis depends a lot on execution so I will keep the process of making and reviewing in order to make the thesis always on the right track.
3. VR is an interesting form for presenting my thesis so I will also consider how to utilize the advantage of VR and how VR could improve my thesis? I will think about the interaction users can have like waving hand or arm, touching and moving creatures, etc.
4. The visual style is important. Making mood board might be super helpful. Think about Audio experience can improve the thesis to next level although it would be too complex. Recently, I am trying different visual styles that I can achieve. The technical part is hard, so I will keep learning now knowledge in order to make cooler visual effects, but the priority for me in the current step is making it functional. 
5. They gave me some references that might inspire me further. They are Polyfauna app, the works Julius Horsthuis, VR game “Ayahuasca” and Github repo “Keijiro”.

For the next steps, I will make clear production schedule. In general, my production stage will be in the following order, creatures object structures design and A-life function->visual style improvement->atmosphere improvement and VR interaction function.

For the fourth group meeting, we talked about our progress. I showed my research and demo code of creature’s morph. Jun and Ada still need to make their concept of thesis more specific. Yueqing showed her 2d animated character. I keep doing my research on artificial life, especially wandering and flocking. Also, I made some simple storyboard and envision different type of presentation for the thesis.

I had a great conversation with Sarah last night. First, I told to Sarah that I wrote detailed impact and “why” of my thesis topic. I wanted the thesis could be a reminder for me and visitors. When we get negative emotion, we can remember the scene manifested in my thesis so we can better adjust our mentality. Then, I told my process so far to Sarah. I am doing two parts of research, and the first part is learning generative art code and algorithm by reading The nature of Code. The second part is doing research on rendering or shader in Unity. I had tested flocking behaviour and random displacement of vertex of 3d model in Unity,  furthermore, I will list a series of behaviors by the order of importance. I will try to accomplish them one by one. The most important thing for me is making it work in current stage. Also, I will try to make simple shader effect based on different characteristic of “six root delusions” at the beginning stage.

After talking with Sarah, she suggested me to make a storyboard about the flow of users experiencing the thesis. She also asked me to consider what is the context of the thesis? During the conversation, Sarah suggested me many artists or art projects I might be interested in. I hope one of the artists she recommended to me could be my thesis mentors, which could be possible. 

Artists and art projects recommended to me:

https://www.marpi.studio/

https://dlobser.com/

http://cabbi.bo/me/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/420840/BLARP/

https://pixlpa.com/

For the third group meeting, we only had 3 students came up so we had a brief session this time. At the beginning, Yueqing had a make-up explanation about her proposal. She clearly described what her thesis would looks like. She wanted to make a social simulation game, which let young generation pay more attention to elderly. Then, Elizabeth and me talked about our process of thesis. 

During the second group meeting, we talked about our process of proposal. We had 5 mins self explanation and 5 mins feedback. Jun showed his concept of memory and think about the connection between death and life. Ada showed her concept about vj, elderly and pop culture. Last, Elizabeth presented her proposal related to radio wave visualization. They gave me some suggestion about proposal. I needed to be more clear to demonstrate the concept of “six root delusions” in my proposal.