A Very MAD Blog
Month
We hope to change the users’ thought patterns to make for healthier thinking and management of stress. We want to show that stress is a tangible thing that you can see and change. We did this by creating a window into the user’s minds.
This project is a mix between interactive art and psychology all tied together in technology. In our display, we want to show people mindfulness without showing them mindfulness. We want them to discover it by interacting with our piece. We creatively brought art and psychology together to solve a very big issue in today’s society.
“Mindfulness is a skill that allows us to be less reactive to what is happening in the moment. It is a way of relating to all experience—positive, negative and neutral—such that our overall suffering is reduced and our sense of well-being increases. To be mindful is to wake up, to recognize what is happening in the present moment. We are rarely mindful. We are usually caught up in distracting thoughts or in opinions about what is happening in the moment. This is mindlessness.” - (Germer, 2004)
I drew my ideas from different areas and stuck them together. I have some knowledge in neuroscience and psychology; so, I contributed that to the group, I also have experience in circuitry and microcontrollers, and an understanding of design and user interaction. This allowed me to be more creative by drawing my ideas from multiple fields. I did look at a lot of other interactive art displays such as Waterlight Graffiti, art galleries and on the website Pinterest (Interactive Exhibition, 2017). However, all of the other interactive projects I could find were about either directly affecting the viewers’ mental state or the user directly affecting the work. I did not find any showing the users mental state and then changing it, I know something similar exists, however, I have not found it.
Simmons (2014) book Interactive Art Therapy, showed multiple interesting interactive exercises made for psychology. This was interesting to see how they can use similar things to help patients. By reading through these different exercises it helped give me an insight into how real psychologists could use our display. “Interactive art differs from static art such as paintings because interactive art entails reciprocal response or influence between artwork and audience” - (Seevinck, 2017). Overall, from an artistic side and also a psychological side, our project shows a glimpse into the mind of the user and has the potential to change a user’s view about stress.
Our Brief: “Create an Immersive translation of an individual’s state of mind as an introspective experience” Which summaries to taking someone’s thoughts and emotions and making them into a physical experience, we went with stress in the final iteration. Our main idea is that by making the users’ thoughts a physical tangible thing, they can be just that. By making the stress into a storm that you can control, it indirectly shows how you can control stress in the same way.
We hope to help reduce stress in this stress-fueled world by a metaphor. We have a storm behind a window that reacts to your stress and you can put all your worries into it. By calming the storm, you are calming yourself and the window is like a window into your own mind. We want the user to realize they can separate themselves from the storm that is their stress and see stress as a tangible thing and hopefully, therefore, be able to reduce or manage it better. We want the user to type their worries into the tablet on the desk and watch them appear on the screen and then put their finger on the scanner and try to calm the storm. Thus, changing their view on stress and worries.
The final iteration of this project embodies the concept and brief by incorporating many elements. By using a real window that we are projecting onto rather than a screen with a window and a desk with photos and plants, we are adding to the realism factor making it more believable. We are using heart rate and an input terminal to get an idea of the users’ state of mind and then translating that into the physical real world that is how the projected storm reacts. The storm changes in intensity by getting louder and the rain getting faster, as well as, the addition of thunder.
The brief changed throughout the course of this project as we refined and generated new ideas. The final iteration of this project is nothing like I could have imagined at the beginning. This I think shows that the creative process has been active. To help the creative process we started the project not knowing each other apart from areas of interest. This means we could easily make creative ideas off each other and we all had a different angle to go from and different knowledge to draw off. This helped us think outside the box to best solve the problem and focus on how to make the project a reality. This lead to Storm, the final iteration of our project.
Baer, R. (2010). Assessing Mindfulness and Acceptance Processes in Clients. New Harbinger Publications.
Germer, C. (2004). What is Mindfulness? INSIGHT JOURNAL, 24-29.
Interactive Exhibition. (2017). Retrieved from Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.nz/explore/interactive-exhibition
Seevinck, J. (2017). Emergence in Interactive Art. Springer.
Simmons, L. L. (2014). Interactive Art Therapy: “No Talent Required” Projects. Routledge.
We ended up with a wooden window with a piece of material on the back so we could backward project a storm. This also has storm sounds through a set of speakers. We also have a heart rate monitor and a tablet on the table. The storm changes when you type in words and also changes with your heart rate.
The project looks completely different to what we originally thought of and kept changing up until the last day. It has even changed since I took this picture.
The addition of a heart rate sensor was originally difficult and inaccurate but seems to be working a lot better now thanks to a mix of my case idea and Liam’s programming skills.
When we decided on backward projection we needed to find the right fabric and the branded stuff is a ridiculous price. Luckily another group was doing a similar thing and they pointed me towards a cheap fabric shop. ROAD TRIP! Kale and I went and looked through the shop for a good while and eventually found it. I also brought double what we needed because if you don’t you’ll end up needing it. I ironed It and staple gunned it to the frame tight and it looked good.
The window was originally thought to be placed in a wall we would build but this changed to a hanging design. We had a few problems here mostly the pole we brought was too small for the stands and the chain was unstable and fell in testing. I managed to fix both of these. The size of the pole I fixed with some cut up puzzle floor foam mats that I wrapped around the pole where the stand connects. I also made the chain a lot safer by turning the hooks that the window hung off, into loops by bending them around, which was a lot harder than it sounds.
After this, we moved it into position and set up the projector. Then I worked out how to change the projector so it was mirrored so everything was the right way around. Then another group decided to take up most of the studio space moving our projector so we relocated and re-setup.
The PC and projector I set up in a way that if the power was cut for some reason it would automatically turn back on and auto start all of the software; at the same time as not sleep, shutdown, or update.
The Arduino soldering also went well and we didn’t have any problems apart from length which just meant I needed to extend the wires a bit. I managed to solder around the case well and make it not look terrible
The last thing on the list is PC. I bought a spare PC in to use and tried to make the cables as tidy as possible making good use of extension cables.
I had a huge interest in using EEG for this project and did a lot of programming and research into using it for measuring stress. However, the EEG we were going to use for this project stopped functioning and we couldn't get another in time.
I also spent a large amount of time trying to work with the connect in processing, about a week. It was a nightmare. If the drivers weren't crashing, the libraries and APIs were. Eventually, I ended up just using a webcam and got the same effect but it took a matter of hours rather than days. My end goal was a program that gave a number out between 1 and 10 that showed the amount of movement of a subject. 0 being no movement and 10 being starjumps. However, this code wasn’t used in the final submission.
The stain was a fairly last minute decision and was rushed. I fell it could be better but it will do the job. Either way, it looks a bit better than plain wood. However, some stain go onto the fabric and it needed to be removed (luckily I brought double) I planned to redo it but it was done when I next saw it. It wasn’t ironed this time and wasn’t completely tight. It doesn’t look as good as it did but I hope with the projector on and lights off, no one will notice.
Something I seem to always struggle with is making time to blog. For me, it takes so much energy and I need to get into a certain mood to do it. I still have about 10 other half done related posts in my drafts folder that I didn’t get to finish. I definitely fell I could have blogged more.
The last problem that we are still dealing with is the program freezing. I blame windows and wish I installed Linux like I usually would for a project like this, but, too late now.
I learned a lot more about creative teams, as much as I hate working with people in a group; It is essential to the creative process or at least helps speed it up. Having other people helps trigger new ideas and also weed out bad ones. This works especially well if you haven’t worked together before like I explained in my first ctec503 post - http://blog.epsilum.co.nz/post/164504325489.
I also learned a lot from the research I did because of this project. I built on other things that I researched in the past, such as EEG, Neurology, and Japanese concepts.
This was a long project, but, it went fast! I’m glad to say its coming to an end but I definitely had some fun making this with the group, all of whom I didn’t know at all before this project started. A lot went wrong and could be better but overall I am happy with the outcome.