"To Make Me Fret" New Media Project

  Week 10 served as the culmination of all tweaking and alterations, as we focused on making the finished product and conducting one final dress rehearsal. With the finalization of the installation itself came logistical prep that needed to be done such as advertising the performance on Westphal social media and figuring out equipment setup. My first task was finding out if we could rent equipment from the equipment room, and the answer was a swift no. Then it was decided that we could make do with phone cameras and tripod with a bit of tweaking, i.e. turning the camera speed, ISO, and white balance to max. The next task was finalizing the prompts we would use based on feedback from users in the last dress rehearsal. Whereas before we were focused on getting enough prompts to test, now it was moreso about narrowing them down to make sure we get the prompts that best achoeve the intended effect without causing the systems to break. As this started feeling more real after conducting a dr

  Much of week 9 was building up towards Monday the 11th's dress rehearsal, in which we hosted actual audience members and put on our first semi-complete performance. The most immediate task for me was helping to put together the user feedback survey, which is instrumental in polishing the product for the final performance. We tried to format it in a way where we could gain the most insight into the biggest points of confusion we could foresee the audience having while also leaving room for them to point out issues that we did not anticipate. Looking at the results, much of the feedback was within expectation, which is a great sign for our self-reflection ability as a group, and other feedback was also areas we noted ourselves as needing imporvement while we were watching and leading the performance. One example of this was the runtime; I think we all felt it was too short and the ending too abrupt in most cases. I also took charge of creating most of the prompts we had available,

  Much of my research in the past two weeks was centered around constructing the story and image for the final screen installation, with particular focus on the effects that would trigger on-screen. As a beginner in Unreal, I started by searching for various tutorials and testing them out one by one: Dissolve effect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQbuc4EFWM&ab_channel=CorebGames Burning Mask: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-p1_QRhgg4&ab_channel=CorebGames Fire disintegration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79ZnSh6nJUo&ab_channel=UnrealCG Destruction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZN2ZTzaDU4&ab_channel=UnrealEngine Freezing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI2MUHN-hX8&ab_channel=AlexHuang Smoke: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdXt7Qov3wI&ab_channel=IntoThe3D Depeneding on input from the rest of the installation team and the final design of the stage/room, not all of these may be used, or more than what is listed may make it's way into the final inst

 This week my primary two objectives were to figure out a way to dynamically change an object/actor's attributes (such as color) in Unreal Engine and to create a music synthesis system in VCV like the one inside the exhibition, except for the outside. The former was simply finding a video tutorial on YouTube, linked above, which concisely explains how to create these dynamic changes. It is a fairly simple process thankfully, which means we should be able to easily implement this function into the projection aspect. One thing we will have to change is the trigger to initiate the change from a keyboard click to a sensor input, which will require working with the touch team to figure out how to port out that information. The latter is a bit more difficult given my inexperience with VCVRack, but once again YouTube video tutorials are helping speed the process along significantly. I am trying to create a procedurally synthesized sound sequence that mirrors the inside exhbition sound on

  This week was focused on researching the theoretical foundations of the project before the practical work begins, investigating similar projects that have been done at Drexel before, and reaching out to faculty who have particpated in those projects. One promising lead I found was the Music Entertainment Technology Lab , also known as the MET-Lab, in the ExCITe Center. "The MET-Lab pursues transdisciplinary research at the convergence of media and technology, particularly in the areas of sound and music." In the past, they have built projects such as the Magnetic Resonator Piano, LiveNote, and the Sound of Music. Where their work shares commonalities with what we are seeking to achieve is in both the classification of emotion in music and visual music representation via live variable projection. With regards to the former, I believe it's important to this project to address the perceived subjectivity of the abstract concept of mood. For this project to have the intended