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Journey to Xotera

Journey to Xotera is a guided interactive storytelling experience— set in outer space— designed to encourage participants to rethink how they use of their imagination.

Hayden Carey

https://vimeo.com/491714003

Description

Journey to Xotera is an interactive role-playing experience. Think of it as larping (live-action role-playing) that takes place on Zoom. The companion app allows for real-time interactivity.

How it works: Each Zoom guest is assigned the role of an astrobiologist looking for life on other planets. As your CampCom, I am guiding you on the inaugural mission to Xotera, an exo-planet that could one day be an Alternative Earth.

Using Zoom, real-world objects, and the interactive app, guests will be asked to communicate with their fellow astrobiologist teammates, reimagine everyday items as pieces of in-world texture, play mini-games, and, most importantly, opt into using their imaginations.

In this performative Zoom experience, guests are reminded how fun it is to tap into their childlike instincts. Children are inventive; nothing is out of bounds. Journey to Xotera encourages adults to question what it means to play. By the end, I hope guests hold onto their imagination, which hopefully the experience has inspired.

See the Companion App here: https://evening-castle-29122.herokuapp.com/input/

See the Mission Control Center here: https://evening-castle-29122.herokuapp.com/input/control-center.html

IMALR-GT.202, IMALR-GT.201 , IMALR-GT.201
Critical Experiences, Connections Lab, Connections Lab
Narrative/Storytelling,Play/Games
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The Sommers

This is our retelling of the story of Icarus & Daedalus.

Patrick Warren, Monni Qian

https://youtu.be/E2qVWqpZksc

Description

In this retelling of the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus, we initially aimed to create a purely audio experience. After we completed that, we decided that it would be fun to create a visual to go along with it. In an ideal setting, this would be projected into a corner at room scale. For this YORB experience, we believe that it would be best for the viewer to get up close to the screen and try to become immersed in it.

ITPG-GT.2076.001, ITPG-GT.2076.001
Out of Order: Storytelling + Technology (Online), Out of Order: Storytelling + Technology (Online)
Culture,Narrative/Storytelling
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You and I Don't See The Same World

We each see the world through our own filter – literally.

Wendy Wang

https://youtu.be/mM-xqNZBNcU

Description

So much of how we view the world depends on what we see. But is the world really an objective truth that's just for everyone to eventually see it? This could be something for the audience to think about while exploring the diversity of animal vision. From finding out how your pet sees you, to learning extraordinary ways different animals see the signals that we could not observe, it's a fun experience to explore how we all see the world a little differently.

*This project aims to show the diversity of color vision. However, as some animals perceive aspects of light that we cannot see, and may perceive colors with a higher dimension of complexity, these visualizations are my speculation of what could be.

ITPG-GT.2233.00007
ICM
Education,Narrative/Storytelling
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Light Up 2020

An interactive miniature installation that invites people to take a peek at normal people’s daily life under quarantine.

Jingyao Shao, Viola He

https://vimeo.com/489099811

Description

Light Up 2020 is an interactive miniature installation that uses light and projection to explore moments in mundane lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Seeing the silhouette of 4 people living in a neighboring building, the audience is given a flashlight to shine through their windows and reveal the residents in full color, eavesdropping on their conversations, interactions, and observing snippets of their day-to-day life.

We were inspired by our lockdown experiences in populated cities hard-hit by the pandemic — how our daily routines changed as we spent the majority of our days home alone, and how our relationships with our neighbors evolved. We read stories from Wuhan, Milan, New York City and beyond, about people coping with the lockdown through music, art, self-care, cheering for essential workers, and loving balcony exchanges with their neighbors. We hope to create a narrative, present in the form of an interactive installation utilizing paper model, light, and projection, to capture that spirit. We wrote and devised 4 stories with the help of some of our friends at ITP. Some characters come from our minds, some inspired by their own stories, brought to life through their improvisation acting. In this generic 3-story apartment building, you get to take a look at unique personalities, sending care to their loved ones, enjoying songs and movements, despite the unusual circumstances.

There’s also something inherently interesting about watching and being watched that comes with urban living where we can peak at people’s lives through their windows. The interaction of spotlighting through a window is, in turn, a discussion of our voyeuristic curiosity as human beings. Playing around with the scale, this miniature installation also offers an unprecedented intimate storytelling experience.

ITPG-GT.2301.00005
Intro to Phys. Comp.
Art,Narrative/Storytelling
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Cyborgian Rock

The Cyborgian Rock, a fictional entity experienced via a chatbot, stimulates animistic imagination in the user.

Maria Maciak

https://vimeo.com/489249670

Description

The Cyborgian Rock (CR) explores the untapped potentialities of social presence theory in technology. Social presence can be defined as the sense of being with another and is exploited by the designers of products such as Alexa or Tamagotchi.

The CR experience is the opposite of our encounters with consumer techno-products. It does not serve a utilitarian purpose or provide consumerist pleasures. Instead, it steers one towards reflections on nature, ancient traditions, and traditional modes of understanding as they relate to the modern experience.

The rock entity speaks obliquely, evoking both a sense of a non-human consciousness and providing the negative space necessary for a sense of social presence. The rock's responses touch on ideas stemming from animistic traditions, thus marrying the digital interface design and ancient modes of projecting social presence onto the natural world.

IMALR-GT.202, IMALR-GT.201 , IMALR-GT.201 , IMALR-GT.202
Critical Experiences, Connections Lab, Connections Lab, Critical Experiences
Culture,Narrative/Storytelling
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Soundrop

A poetic interactive painting of rain that reflects the viewers through splendid colors

Bei Hu, Junoh Yu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My7IVEd98w0&feature=emb_title

Description

“Soundrop” is a poetic interactive painting of rain that reflects the viewer through splendid colors. In this piece, we focused on ‘rain’ and ‘meditation’. So through conversation, we decided to write a poem about rain as a part of the process of making. We tried hard to create a relaxing and meditative visual-sound experience for the viewer. Through using PoseNet and Webcam, we can capture the viewer’s position and present the shape of the viewer with rain. When the viewer stands in front of the P5.js painting with rain falling from the top, the white raindrops turn into rainbow colors as soon as they pass through the viewer’s body outline. The changing color of rain will be updated according to the body movement of the viewer. The speed of the rain and the volume of the rain sound could be changed according to the position of the viewer's body. We want people to experience the rain in a new way as they are standing in the rain, and listening to our self-written poems. (Co-created by Junoh Yu and Bei Hu)

ITPG-GT.2233.00007
ICM
Sound,Narrative/Storytelling
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A Shining Tree

This project aims to create a poetic and embodied experience of nature and growth by letting people grow shining trees using their body.

Chenyan Yu, , Zairan Liu

https://youtu.be/EweHTKCm43M

Description

The Shining Tree combines Posenet to detect human and p5.js for the growing tree itself. Our purpose is to remind people the magical and beautiful nature and its amazing arrangement of the circle of life and at the same time, make it a calm and peaceful process for people to experience by themselves as a way of meditation and reflection. In the chaotic time of Covid-19, not only social interactions are partially impeded, but our connection to nature. A shining tree seems to be a great solution to the anxiety we are facing now and can help us to reconnect with the most basic yet wonderful experience of living and the hope it carries within the circle of life.

ITPG-GT.2233.00007
ICM
Narrative/Storytelling,Play/Games
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To 100 (Non-existed) Boys I've Dated Before

A Tinder Clone tells my frustrating dating experiences with 100 non-existed men whose dating profiles and stories are machine learning generated online.

Tianxu Zhou, Zeyao Li

https://www.loom.com/share/a8455c5fdfe04fbf9f9adf49d628296c

Description

Men all have a well-framed dating app bio. However, we all had a weird and frustrating dating story behind it. No matter what happened on our date, there's only one ending – we never talked again.

The project explores using existing datasets on the Internet and brings awareness of dating data privacy to the audience.

Swipe! Use it as a regular Tinder. If you swipe right, you will get my dating story with the man you matched. The chat stores all the men you connect with and the dating story behind them.

ITPG-GT.2536.00001
Programming from A to Z (Online)
Machine Learning,Narrative/Storytelling
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SEEN

I see and I exist, no fears to be naked, no absolutes in black and white.

Zhuolin Wu

https://youtu.be/IeNJmdwtiRI

Description

This is my semester-long project of my Fall 2020 at ITP, which involves a bunch of eye symbols and graphics, expressing the theme: Looking for a witness of life. Inspired by Katy Perry’s 5th studio album , a underestimated pop records that kept me being alive, got me thinking in depth, and stimulating my souls and energy.

I deconstructed, and restructured the storyline and meaning of each track in this album, collected the lyrics that resonated with me, and visualized them in different forms such as Unity animation, video and audio, projection mapping, installation and graphic art. It was not that easy to show the sincerity and intimacy, not even to mention transferring those memories, emotions and feelings, into programming visual language, physical interactions and fabrications.

Those works speak for me, and by that I want to open more potential connections and communications in the future. Not only the connection to the others who can be your side and ride the journey with you, but also to the self.

Aside from the visual composition, I bring more personalities, narratives, and intimacy into it by etching my own monologue into the piece. Visit the project website for more details about SEEN.

ITPG-GT.2301.00008, ITPG-GT.2005.00003, ITPG-GT.2233.00003, ITPG-GT.2002.00005
Intro to Phys. Comp., CL – Visual Language (Online), ICM, CL – Animation
Art,Narrative/Storytelling
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nonclub

Nonclub is a room in passing, modeled after spaces we've lost access to and offered as an interruption, a break from digital overload.

Christina Lan

https://youtu.be/Y8qNKASIZVY

Description

Nonclub developed over a course of exploring re-enactment, simulation, and memory in relation to underground spaces and sound. In thinking about the effects on mental health from the loss of certain spaces, this piece hopes to create an analogous experience that offers new ways of perceiving embodiment and forming connections.

IMALR-GT.202, IMALR-GT.202
Critical Experiences, Critical Experiences
Sound,Narrative/Storytelling