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.

https://first-latency-df1.notion.site/1-1-Andres-62a57636c214447a9260bdd8d12a2b0d

Knowing that Sehmon and Jamie have similar themes in their topics, and we discovered we are all reading the same books (Ways of Being by James Bridle), we met to discuss our projects.

I gave my normal pitch about the EEG work and got feedback about the identity politics / attribution topic. Jamie questioned whether my work only using inspiration from indigenous plant medicine rituals or Mayan drumming or Eastern meditation, and what about music creating transcendent experiences like the Grateful Dead. We discussed what is citing inspiration or research versus what is name dropping for credibility? Is it necessary to mention my dad taught me about Taoism and Buddhism when I was in elementary school? Other things fit into the narrative more easily, like “I learned to meditate after meeting other ravers who grew up in TM” or “I learned about Mayan trance rituals when researching the effect of repetitive beats on the mind” I want to avoid using parts of my history just as a credibility token, while weaving inspirations and references into the narrative more organically during my presentations.

Sehmon asked how I plan to show my research and background of the project at performances and suggested I make a type of guide / website / zine to distribute at shows. It could cover:

– What an audience member can expect to happen during the experience, inclduing descending down through the brain states, what that feels like
– Description of brainwaves
– Explanation of the technology
– Include my background research, citing sources and inspirations

This could be a take-home guide which is an on-ramp for meditation

Also wondered if the performance be a techno set? Downtempo morning set with such small changes that they are imperceivable, but after time, you know the entire soundscape as completely transformed.

Jamie also wondering if pressure sensors on the floor and movement could help author the composition. I had mentioned I wanted to exploring blurring the authorship line by having audience members wear EEG or heart sensors.

Notion page
https://www.notion.so/jasonjsnell/2023-04-02-Sehmon-Jamie-f054dfcdaee34594a8ba6428774f3c1f?pvs=4

are all jamie nests just a take on a hood?

in quickly prototyping im finding that the most comfort is coming from covering my face/head. i also want to tuck in my feet, but that is a secondary priority. oh dear, this is toeing into a whole other space.

Just got off a call with my thematic group partners and it was energizing — exactly what I needed to jumpstart my day. I think I get more energy from digging into the projects other people are working on than my own, for some reason. Not sure what that says about me or my work but, ah well.

It was really helpful to hear what is resonating with my classmates. In my study of birds, bird nests, and creation of my own nests, I am relieved to hear that it makes sense to people outside my own head. I am still mulling over “Bird University,” what that means, and what direction it should go.

I have sourced material at the local salvation army for my first iteration of my flight nest. As we discussed in our call this morning, sustainability and circularity should be an element of this. Ideally I would like that to get down to the materials themselves. Can I make a nest out of seaweed? Out of plant fibers or something else? Even though it is authentic to bird nest creation, using down feels problematic. (Also not personally what I want, I don’t think warmth is something I’m chasing atm.) Is it enough to use found objects, and second-hand items? Nothing “new” (except thread, I guess.) Something to keep mulling over.

Hopefully a prototype of a flight nest will be mocked-up today…

After resubmitting my thesis proposal, Craig also gave me a lot of helpful responses,

1. Should keep thinking about the intention of my project, because it sounds contradictory to my proposal. The tone of my project is not clear yet.
2. Encourage me to have a different perspective view on the training data. For example, provide three different models “where data is collected from dramatically different populations”,  to allow a user to choose which training data model they want to be judged with.
3. Do the work I like to do, while also delivering an engaging and memorable experience for participants should be my goal.

So I started to revise the third thesis proposal edition to adjust properly the central question and final purpose.

After a quick introduction to my thesis topic during Recode class, Ellen showed me some articles and projects that related to my topic after class:

1. AI ‘emotion recognition’ can’t be trusted: The belief that facial expressions reliably correspond to emotions is unfounded, says a new review of the field. (It includes a link to a research paper that I also cited, “Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements.”)
2. ITP project from several years ago, part installation and part performance: https://winnieyoe.com/Smile-Please-1
3. The work of Duchenne from the 1800s–researching for the universal human facial expression is not new. See the “The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression” in the Wikipedia entry here and his original text: https://archive.org/details/mechanismofhuman0000duch/mode/2up

Really appreciate and truly inspired me a lot about the experience that I can provide and the history of facial expressions.