Category Archives: Concept

The Soap as a Prob

March 23, 2015 Marie

The Soap as a symbol stands for innocence, abundance and cleanliness. Our task was to impliment these in our design for soap. We decided to have a transparent case out of a lot of small bubbles, like Foam. Foam like the foam you have in bath tub, during washing up or cleaning your hands. Inside the transparent case we have a smaller white case which has an led string in it.

The LED string is arranged in circles in the smaller case. The case outside and the cae inside fits into each other. So its stabil. The technique for example: Arduino, Battery, Distance Sensor or all cables are inside of a top which is fixed with velcro on the smaller case. This top is filled with foam.

The foam has holes where the technique fits and sits.

The best part of this soap is the bubble gun inside. The Bubble gun was hacked and now we are able to controll how and when the bubble gun make bubbles. In both cases (smaller and bigger one) are a big hole, where the bubbles come out. The Bubbles Gun is controlled by the ardunio and the distance sensor. If you „touch“ the distance sensor in range of 5-35 cm the sensor will trigger the bubble gun and the LEDS. The LEDS shine in a colour concept of blue, white, turquois and mixture between them.

Interactive Elements

Kinected with the environment

March 9, 2015 Claire

With this interactive feature of the play the actor of Gortsby can have different impacts on the scenery in the projection.

Setup on stage:

The Kinect is hanging from above the ceiling to capture the space in front of the screen.

The image is projected with a short thrower from behind onto the screen, so that the projector does not stand in the way of the actors on stage. It is mapped onto the outlines of the stage element, because this is not rectangular.

Backstage, we made a ‚saving-area’ around the projector with tape, so that nobody will fall over it or bump into it – because apart from injuries this also could influence the projection mapping onto the screen.

USE IN THE PLAY:

see also: Storyboard Kinect.

1) Revealing the City (Scene: Prologue)

Design of city skyline with window lights:

In the picture you see the outline of the London skyline of Westminster Abbey which is near Hyde Park, where the story takes place. The Prologue was created for introducing the city. Gortsby reveals the city through his thoughts, and also in the projection by walking past the houses. He is reflecting on the tiered society and the people who kind of fell out of it.

The design of the city mainly consists of shadow and light and high contrasts which can also symbolize the contrasts in society. Also the form of the window lights show different kinds of houses of different classes of wealth: One-family-houses, Villas, multy-storyed houses and apartment towers.

Technique:

When Gortsby is passing by in a certain area in front of the screen, the Kinect is capturing his position and triggers, that through the use of processing, just behind him the lights in the windows of the city are switched on. When he turns around and walks back the city lights are switched off in the same way. The effect of switching on and off is made by revealing the picture of the city in background. For this revealing we use the centre of the actor (captured by the Kinect) and send the x and y values (via OSC) to the processing sketch. Having the values of the centre point, we can control the movement of different objects on the screen.

2) Waving away the fog (Scene: Prologue)

Technique:

The city skyline transfuses into fog via processing. Through moving his hand in a defined area in front of the screen, Gortsby can now wave away the fog. Underneath he discovers a park scenery. For the waving we use the closest point to screen, which is in a distinct area. Through the Kinect we can measure the distance of this point to the Kinect. Like getting the centre values of the actor we also can get the x and y values of the closest point and additionally, the height (z value). Sending these three values to a processing sketch gives us the freedom to handle the z value of the coordinate system of the Kinect as an y value in the coordinate system of the display. We are able to translate the movement of an object in the area as a movement on the screen.

Meanwhile in his monologue Gortsby describes how the city more and more turns into a foggy „city of clouds“ and he ends with „I found myself within a city park, alone.“

After that a picture of the city park is fully shown on the screen without any fog.

Design of the city park:

The style is still held in contrast between black and white. You can see a park lantern, in the picture, since in the short story on which the play is based, the author describes that the scene takes place on a bench in a dark area between two lanterns. In the background of the picture you can also see another lantern and another bench. Behind the trees of the park you can still see some of the window lights of different houses and also the outline of Westminster abbey in the sky, so that the audience knows that we are in a park of a city.

This scenery is also used as a non-interactive background during some scenes (see storyboard).

For this purpose the picture has been animated. From time to time some of the window lights are switched on or off, the light of the lantern is flickering a bit and the glowing of the sky is also pulsating very slowly.

3) The Searching (End of Scene 5)

Technique:

After „the important witness“ of the young man’s story has turned up, Gortsby runs through the streets to find the young man again.

By moving in front of the screen, the background behind Gortsby is moving, so that it looks as if he was running through a shopping street. Like the beginning scene (“Revealing the City”) we capture again the centre point of the actor via Kinect and send the point to a processing sketch. The sketch translates the movement of the centre point to movement of the picture on the screen.

Design:

This picture is three times as wide as the other ones, so that it can be moved by Gortsby.

The skyline shows on one part still Westminster Abbey but also roofs of city houses in this area of London. As in the Prologue the environment is guessable only by the lights of the houses. In this case again through the light of windows of different kind’s of houses. In addition here you see also a lot of light advertisements in the streets.

All of these are related to the story: The young man tells Gortsby that he wanted to vist the Patagonian Hotel, but that this one shut down and a cinema theatre was opened there instead. So the sign of the „Patagonian“ is very light and next to it a bright „cinema theatre“ sign. You can find a „chemist’s counter“ and a shop called „Soapbox“, where the young man could have bought his piece of soap. Also „soapbox“ is an expression for a box on which someone can stand to hold a spontaneous speach in public – espeacially at speaker’s corner in Hyde Park London.

In the english version the young man also tells that if he would not find a place to sleep he would have to spend the nightat the Embankment. This could be at the edge of the river but also an underground station. So you see also an underground sign in the streets.

A taxi driver recommended him another hotel, and after having checked in the young man wrote a letter with the adress to his familiy he told. This is why „taxi“ and „post“ can be found in the picture.

Since we included into our skript also a poem about wine of Saki, the autor of the short story, and since also his pseudonym is taken from another poem about wine, you can also find „Saki’s Wine Shop“, besides „Hyde’s Pub“ which is on the one hand named after Hyde Park but on the other hand after Mr. Hyde of Jackyll and Hyde who are as ambiguous as the young man in our story.

„Clean Wash“ also is a hint on the symbol character of the soap in the story and the question if the young man is telling a true story or wants to trick Gortsby.

The style of the visualization and the use of Kinect resembles to the one of the Prologue to add a frame of style to the piece.

For further technology and design descriptions see here: Kinect it! and Kinect, shadow and light

Interactive Elements

“bench” as an interactive element

March 9, 2015 Yvonne

The story begins with main character’s sitting on a bench and continues with his thoughts, observations associated with his environment. Bench is a medium where the writer of the story uses as a place where characters think, express their feelings and communicate. What is the relation between sitting and thinking and how can this relation be used as an input for a bench design? This relation has been defined with regard to sitting postures. Thereby, the design idea has evolved to a bench design which can be manipulated by different sitting postures.

There are three rectangular prisms related to the number of characters in the story and the rectangular prisms have different heights which represent hierarchy between characters. Each rectangular prism have a plate on the top of it which performer can tilt to up and down and this attribute provides different sitting postures.

In terms of interactivity, bench has been designed with the ideas of both helping performers to express emotions and augment the feeling of the environment described in the story. Sound and light are two outputs of the bench in consequence of performers tilting up or down the plate they sit on the top of the it. Light effects have been obtain by placing LED system inside the prisms. There are three switches on the bench; the one in the middle works when the performer sits straight and the other two work when performer sits and tilts left or right on the bench.

By different sitting postures in other words tilting left or right the plate on the top of the bench, some sound and light outputs are obtained. These outputs are: changing the colour of the light, gradually becoming darker or lighter of the light, blinking of the lights, speeding up or down the sound and blinking of the lights, turn on or off the sound.

Interactive Elements

Inside the Story: Visualisation of Gortsbys Thoughts

March 8, 2015 Yvonne

SCENE 2

Introduction into Gortsbys thoughts

Video Mapping on Stage elements / Video Manipulation via Voice Sensor

“Sieh nicht hinauf, die Antwort ist nicht dort, bete nicht, dort ist nicht einer der sich sorgt…”

“…sicher liebt er, wenn das Klirren der Gläser erklingt.”

When Gortsby sits on the bench, his thoughts appears on the stage elements. The brightness of the video is influenced by his voice via wireless microphone. In other words, as the actor cites the poem, the video content can be viewed by audience.

SCENE 3

Projektion/ Visualisation Forlorn Orchestra / Gortsbys thoughts

Gortsby & Elder man / Forlorn Orchestra Sound / Projection of Gortsbys thoughts

SCENE 5 The SOAP

Videomanipulation via Heartbeatsenor

Where to put the sensor best?

Introduction how to use the Heartbeatsensor

Demonstration of the Waterripple-Effect

Visualisation of Gortsbys thoughts: Gortsby thinks about the story younger man told him. The Video bubbles in the scale of Gortsbys heartbeat. Sound of the heartbeat makes the interactive effect more visible/hearable. Essentially, the higher the heart rate, the more visually visible the ripple in the projection of the “soap bubble”. The effect above is achieved by integrating the heartbeat sensor to panStamp for wireless transmission

“…die Seife war das einzig überzeugende Detail an der ganzen Geschichte…”

Concept, Design

Bench and thoughts story board

January 29, 2015 Tamim

Concept, Design

Bench Storyboard

January 22, 2015 Tamim

Concept, Design

Storyboard – Kinect Use in “Dusk”

January 22, 2015 Claire

Prologue “Introducing the City” (2-3 Min)

Dark Stage, A basic city-sound-atmo begins.
GORTSBY enters through the door behind the audience and is walking forward to the stage.

GORTSBY:
Under that foggy sunset London glowed,
Like one huge cob-webbed flagon of old wine.

Mode 1Kinect: Press key. A dark city skyline is shown. GORTSBY walks along the skyline and behind him windows of the city houses turn on.

GORTSBY:
And, as I walked down Fleet Street,
the soft sky Mowed thro’ the roaring thoroughfares…

GORTSBY: …transfused Their hard sharp outlines, blurred the throngs of black On either pavement, blurred the rolling stream Of red and yellow busses, till the town Turned to a golden suburb of the clouds.

By pressing key in Processing switch to
Mode 2: The view of the skyline turns cloudy and disappears in fog.

or alternative transition:

By pressing key in Processing switch to
Mode 3: A screen full of fog. Kinect: By waving GORTSBY can wave away parts of the fog and uncover parts of the city skyline which shows now basically a park with some windows of houses in the background.

Scene 1 „Walking to the park “ (2-3 Min)

No Kinect

Scene 2 „Norman Gortsby“ (5 Min) Introduction into Gortsbys thoughts

No Kinect

Scene 3 „Elder man/ forlorn orchestra“ (3-4 Min)

Evtl. Mode 4: Video as background-projection with Park scene, moving sky and fog. No Kinect Interaction.

The ELDERLY MAN enters the stage. He is slowly walking out of the shadow, heading to the bench and sits down next to Gortsby After THE ELDERLY MAN sits down, through the performers movements the sound changes into a tragic – funny orchestral soundscape, illustrating the elderly gentleman as member of a forlorn orchestra, a tragic and funny figure. A pale half-light surrounds the elderly man while being subtly observed by GORTSBY.

Scene 4 „Younger man“ (10 Min)

Evtl. Mode 4: Video London Park, moving sky and fog. No Kinect Interaction

The ELDERLY MAN leaves. At the same time a YOUNG MAN appears . He is fairly well dressed but scarcely more cheerful of mien than his predecessor. He approaches Gortsby and plunks down on the bench with curses.

YOUNG MAN: Damn it! Why is something like this always happening to me?!

Short break; feeling of being expected to take due notice after this demonstration GORTSBY starts the conversation.

GORTSBY: You don’t seem in a very good temper. The young man turnes to him with a look of disarming frankness which puts Gortsby instantly on his guard. 

YOUNG MAN [thrilled, with loud voice]: You wouldn’t be in a good temper if you were in the fix I’m in. I’ve done the silliest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

GORTSBY [calmly]: Yes?

YOUNG MAN: Came up this afternoon, meaning to stay at the Patagonian Hotel in Berkshire Square when I got there I found it had been pulled down some weeks ago and a cinema theatre run up on the site. The taxi driver recommended me to another hotel some way off and I went there. I just sent a letter to my people, giving them the address, and then I went out to buy some soap — I’d forgotten to pack any and I hate using hotel soap. Then I strolled about a bit, had a drink at a bar and looked at the shops, and when I came to turn my steps back to the hotel I suddenly realized that I didn’t remember its name or even what street it was in. There’s a nice predicament for a fellow who hasn’t any friends or connections in London! Of course I can wire to my people for the address, but they won’t have got my letter till to-morrow; meantime I’m without any money, came out with about a shilling on me, which went in buying the soap and getting the drink, and here I am, wandering about with two pence in my pocket and nowhere to go for the night.

Long Break.

YOUNG MAN [with an embarrassed voice]: I suppose you think I’ve spun you rather an impossible yarn.

GORTSBY [objectively]: Not at all impossible. I remember doing exactly the same thing once in a foreign capital, and on that occasion there were two of us, which made it more remarkable. Luckily we remembered that the hotel was on a sort of canal, and when we struck the canal we were able to find our way back to the hotel.

YOUNG MAN [sensitively]: In a foreign city I wouldn’t mind so much. One could go to one’s Consul and get the requisite help from him. Here in one’s own land one is far more derelict if one gets into a fix. Unless I can find some decent chap to swallow my story and lend me some money I seem likely to spend the night on the Embankment. [with a warm voice in hopes that Gortby believes him] I’m glad, anyhow, that you don’t think the story outrageously improbable.

GORTSBY [slowly]: Of course the weak point of your story is that you can’t produce the soap.

The YOUNG MAN sat forward hurriedly, felt rapidly in the pockets of his overcoat, and then jumped to his feet.

YOUNG MAN [muttering angrily]: I must have lost it. GORTSBY: To lose an hotel and a cake of soap on one afternoon suggests willful carelessness…

The YOUNG MAN scarcely waited to hear the end of the remark. He flitted away down the path, his head held high, with an air of somewhat jaded jauntiness.

Scene 5 „The Soap“ (5 Min)

GORTSBY is watching the YOUNG MAN while he is leaving. GORTSBY is sitting and thinking about the Young Man’s story. He is not thinking what is going on around himself (in city or park), he is just focused on what younger man told him.

GORTSBY: It was a pity, the going out to get one’s own soap was the one convincing touch in the whole story…
London Skyline with Park Projection stops.

Introduction into the soap-theme. Visualizations of Gortsbys thoughts (Visual connota- tions about why it was the only convincing touch in the whole story and these connota- tions might be in relation with some concepts like soap-process, cleanliness, purity, inno- cence etc.) influenced by his voice.

[…]

Scene 6 „Meeting of Gortsby & Younger man“ (3 Min)

No Kinect or Projection

Scene 7 „The Turn“ (3 Min)

GORTSBY: Poor boy, he as nearly as possible broke down. I don ́t wonder either, the relief from his quandary must have been acute. Its a lesson to me not to be too clever in judging by circumstances.

Mode 6: London Skyline Kinect same principle as first scene: GORTSBY uncovers Advertisements (see below) while walking in front of the screen. Visualization of making his way back through a lot of advertisements for soap and hotels. The style is similar to the beginning scene. He passes by a post office and a cinema with a sign on it “Patagonian Hotel closed”. He walks along bars and shops.

Transition to Mode 7 Video of Park. Flickering lights. No Fog.

Then he is in the park again.

GORTSBY stops. Spot-Light onto the bench, where GORTSBY sees the ELDERLY MAN who sat next to him before. The ELDERLY MAN seems to search sth. poking and peering beneath the bench and on all sides of it.

GORTSBY: Have you lost anything Sir?
OLDER MAN: Yes a cake of soap.

Outro (2 Min)

No Kinect.

END

_________________________________

Click on the following link for Storyboard as row of pictures:

SB Kinect

Concept, Design, The Story

The domestication of thoughts

January 22, 2015 Yvonne

Concept for visualizing thoughts by using biometric Sensors

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Background:

SAKI chose the Hide Park in his shortstory DUSK as setting for Gortsbys thoughts and allegorizes them with pictures of the inside of the character Gortsby.

Gortsby visits the park to get in contact with someone or something. A park basically is something natural, but at the same time created by humans, domesticated and influenced by peoples culture and society.

Is it the same with our thoughts?

The two different encounters and Gortsbys misjudgment (amplified by the element of the soap as a symbol of domestication) show it apparently – his thoughts are a result of society influenced prejudices.

Find out more about our research on visualization of thinking/prejudice in our thoughts video .

The Design of Domesticated Thoughts:

For the projection of Gortsbys thoughts we discussed a lot of ideas about visualizing thoughts as something industrial reproduced or metaphorical like growing thought-plants.

Finally we chose a realistic „domesticated“ point of view perspective and Close Up videos of nature and contrast them with the destruction and irrationality of animated abstract forms. This visual process from a naturalistic picture to abstract forms we want to effect interactively via biometric input of the actor in our play.

Realisation:

thinking- naturalistic to irrational

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Biometric Input via Voice and Heartbeat Sensor:

We influence the visual process through biometric parameters of the actor like voice and heartbeat. Associative pictures are build up and fall apart triggered by the actors behavior.

The transformation from biometric input into projected output refers to the ambiguity between nature and domestication and is a connecting piece between actor and stage.

Find out more about how to use the Sensors in interactive projects.

thoughts on stage – have a look at our Storyboard:

Concept, Design

Kinect, Shadow and Light

January 18, 2015 Claire

Starting Point Task: Showing “Tiered Society” by using Shadow / Light and Tracking with Kinect

Pt. 1 – Conceptual Phase

Idea: Make a prologue scene which gives an atmosphere of the society before Gortsby first enters the stage.

Inspiration: „SEVENTH SENSE” from Anarchy Dance Theatre + Ultra Combos
http://youtu.be/iQlDEPLHPyQ?t=2m50s [Nov. 2014]

Light = people included in society“; Illuminated people” let white cubes grow by touching the walls

Darkness = people fallen out of society ; “Dark people” can destroy these buildings by touching them

Realization Ideas:

Tracking with Kinect which scans the stage. Being near the wall starts buildings of cubes on that wall.

Resulting Problem in conceptual content: there’s only good and bad.

Solution for this problem: Interactive Costumes which switch the illumination when they come in contact with each other. So people who where lit become dark when they meet a dark person and this dark person becomes illuminated.

Inspiration for this: „Gideon Obarzaneks Digital Moves“ http://youtu.be/qaT64TYsVgA?t=1m38s [Nov. 2014]

Technical Problem: Too difficult to realize switching of light of/around the costumes. Idea discarded.

Pt. 2.1 – Visualization Phase (Cubes)

Going on with the idea to let houses of cubes be built and rebuilt in the projection on the position of different persons on stage.

Cube: This cube is designed based on a house near Hyde Park in London where the short story originally takes place. Based on the topic „shadow and light“, it consists only of light-rays.

The cubes will grow to houses, when the light-people will come near the wall and raise their hands. When dark people come near these light-buildings they can turn them down again with a downward movement of the hand.

On the ground of the stage, lines of lights are moving like the lights of moving cars.

After that in the city will grow the park with bushes and street lights. The Stage could be split in different layers of gaze-textile on which will be projected.

Pt. 2.2 – Visualization Phase (Lights)

The idea of the stage design changed. It should now be built of abtract forms. So the resulting idea for our task was to make these forms the houses, and to project only window lights on them.The principle with the kinect stayed the same. For the park scene should be generated bushes instead of window lights. The light of a lantern in the park would be shown with theatre-spotlights.

Stadtmodul Parkmodul

For the next phase the interactive generating of the Forms should be realized with the application „Processing“.

Pt. 3 – „Processing“ Phase

The skript changed and it became clear that in our prologue-scene Gortsby will be the only performer on stage.

After having learned the basics of the application „Processing“, I tried to combine this knowledge of simple interactivity with our idea to let window lights be switched on and off.

The most easy and effective way was the following:

Window-Scene:

I created a picture which shows the tiered society by different kinds of window lights. You only can guess the houses from their lights. The rest of the pic is black except a sky which outlines the skyline of London.
With „Processing“ black bars are moving with the position of the performer so that behind Gortsby the lights will be switched on. When he goes back they turn off.

Working with fog:

a) While playing a bit more with basic functions of „Processing“ we developped a code which makes the whole scene be covered with dusk.

Now we use it as transition between the scene with the window lights and the park-scene.

Problem: In high resolution the outcome doesn’t run smooth.

b) The idea came up to let Gortsby wipe away the dusk and discover the park behind it.

For wiping away the fog we were first searching for a kind of eraser tool. But this was hard to realize. In the end we used a funktion called „painting-pixels“ and with some tricks it also worked:

The background is a pic of the park covered with fog. Where you move your hand in front of the Kinect, will be painted pixels. The colour of these pixels will be the same as the pixels on that position in a pic which shows the park without fog. So in the end the performer is painting the park without fog over the pic with the fog. But it looks as if he was revealing the scene.

For the outcome also have a look at our storyboard for Kinect use in the play.

Concept

“Food for thought”- The mess that we made (Version 1)

January 5, 2015 Chinh

In the first stage of realizing our goal -portraying the inner thought of Gorstby, we came up with several ideas. Now the job is to polish ideas we thought to be feasible, working on technical part going along with those and at the same time, creating more ideas

1. Polish current “golden egg”

On the date of 11/12. we were working on “Doubt tree”. “Doubt Tree” involved projection of a tree-like- growing animation and input from actor to determine its growrate. The scenario is supposed to be during Gorstby’s conversation with the young man in which “Doubt tree” represents the doubtness in Gortsby’s mind. At the end of the scene, when Gorstby found the soap and immediately came to the conclusion that the young man was telling the truth, the “Doubt tree” will be shattered.

As suggested above, “Doubt tree” would require fair amount of work on 2 main aspects: Animation and actor input interaction. For the animation, the current is done by Processing. But the choice of art style and theme to go with the whole play is not yet determined, so things might be change in the future. The interactive input is done by using wireless transmission using panStamp and sensor. The panStamp part is more or less done, and we are working on which sensor to use between: Force sensor(tested and worked), or new biometric one(heart sensor, gas sensor) . Further update will be on the next blog. Stay tune :).

“Water ripple” idea, which is a floor projection simulating the step-on-water effect, is currently on hold due to the fact that we are not aware of the actual stage. If the stage is not significantly higher than the audience, then the floor’s projection won’t be much of a impact. Thus, we put it on hold for now.

2. Technical state

As mentioned above, panStamp is our choice of wireless transmission. The choice of sensor varies according to the design of interactivity. But we also think we would limit the range of sensor due to budget limitation. Detail implementation should be available once we conclude our design choice and script.

Exploring Interactive Theatre

Category Archives: Concept

The Soap as a Prob

Kinected with the environment

“bench” as an interactive element

Inside the Story: Visualisation of Gortsbys Thoughts

Bench and thoughts story board

Bench Storyboard

Storyboard – Kinect Use in “Dusk”

The domestication of thoughts

Kinect, Shadow and Light

“Food for thought”- The mess that we made (Version 1)

Welcome to our project blog!