deshan4thyear

[deshan4thyear]

Presentation reflection

After Oscar and I presented I wanted to reflect on the feedback and our design. Some criticisms included the language used for the presentation, using more appropriate language is essential in helping students and others to grasp the concepts easier. Another being the technically unstable side of the experience, although in my opinion the experience did work the way it should have, Juliana mentioned that it didnt appear to work as expected and would benifit from being more functional. Some other feedback was even though our frameworks and theories were good, the argument for self and world connection and reconstruction of the self through vr wasnt convincing enough - on Julianas part she thought that the physical representation rather than a virtual one was more engaging, whereas Jen was more understanding of this concept.

In saying this reflecting on my own input and experience this design definitely engaged with the key theories and frameworks researched. Overall I think that the execution of the design could have been a bit more stable and in a setting that allowed for virtual reality - this would have facilitated the immersive present connections potentially lost. I think personally I was a lot more confident in the presentation and very proud of the design. Reflecting on Oscar and I’s collaborative performance their could be some tweaks to workflow and discussing who does what and to what end, although I believe we had our own ways of working and we did work well together to get tasks done. 

[deshan4thyear]

Reflection & tests - forging the experience

As we move into the symposium I wanted to reflect on our current stage of the experience. We managed to get the light spheres to work as planned - reacting to heart-rate with sounds that correspond also. The landscape was tweaked to captivate a more immersive environment, utilising aspects of grass/flowers, rocks, trees and mountains. As the heart-rate slows we are presented with an environment to look around and experience.

These were some of the stills captured from our current scene. Reflecting on the experience itself I think that it addresses the immersive meditation notions of lallys “architecture of energies” (Lally 11) and Spencer Smiths 3 criticisms of architecture in his manifesto “An Architecture of Presence”. It also draws on immersive presence theories from Sanchez-Vives & Slater which discuss minimal gesture of virtual environments to induce a more present feeling.  (Sanchez-Vives & Slater, 15) This works in with a key virtual reality precedent “Dances with butterflies” which utilises the same “minimal gesture” notion, this being the orchestrating of butterflies. The focus and attention of this movement is magnified through its simplicity, we hope to have achieved this in the same way with our experience. These theories are just a few to name that have influenced the experience. The experience still has a few tweaks to latency and post processing but other than that its almost finished.

[deshan4thyear]

Soundscape

In beginning to create our experience I wanted to build off of virtual landscapes by thinking about about how soundscapes are used to create a more present relationship with space. Sound is essential in bringing a space to life and is apart of the sensorial apparatus. 

For this I started with a concept of creating sounds for an anxious situation. For this I collected sounds and layered them over a base track, gradually moving towards a higher pace, chaotic sound scene. Garage project is the main tool used for this process - this also has provided the benefit of being able to forge your own sounds and work them into compositions.

From having created my first soundscape I wanted to start creating sounds for the experience in light of its recent shift. To do this I wanted to create some positive, harmonising sounds for the slowing of the heart-rate. The core purpose of these sounds is to give life to the light spheres, as the user moves towards a more calm state the sounds will correspond as a representation of mood. For this I went back into garage band and only used the instruments available there rather than sourcing sounds.

For my final sounds I composed 3 key sounds - Airways being a base track that plays between both the heart-rate movements. Emerald haze and sun glitters were the 2 key instruments used to create the calming, harmony noises. These noises should help to bring life to the light spheres.

[deshan4thyear]

Immersion and presence - From Presence Towards Consciousness Maria V. Sanchez-Vives and Mel Slater

I came across a transformative article that helped further my research into virtual environments. This writing provided me with relivant clues and frameworks that helped develop my approach and thinking about virtual environments. 

Maria and Mel look into what contributes to the overall immersion / presence and the different working parts within them. They discuss how immersion and presence have been measured in virtual environment situations. They also delve into neuroscience of how virtual environments effect your brain and perception, the most interesting of which is the shift in consciousness felt in vr. Overall this has provided me with guidelines and frameworks to achieve a more immersive and present connection in virtual environments. These ideas also contribute to the notions of meditation theory and one of the most important pieces of that being present connection between self and world.

[deshan4thyear]

Experience reflection

Reflecting on some of the experiential artists work we decided on a final concept for the experience. At this point we have been working on 3 key scenes experimenting and evolving the idea through these. Our previous scope of the experience has narrowed down as the time it takes to design one of these scenes and to have it in a stable working condition is quite difficult. We have decided to go with a landscape driven test where we the user is situated in a dark scene that is then revealed from rising light spheres. These spheres being directly controlled by heart-rate, if your heartrate is high the spheres wont emerge but as you slow down, pay attention to your breath and reflect on the moment, your heart-rate will slow and the spheres will emerge.

This has been our current 3rd scene we have been working on, utilising lamps of light as sources for parts of the spatial soundscape we have been working on. From here we want to change the lamps to spheres and give them a path to move on. Add in some more landscape elements such as trees, rocks etc. The sky will also change to be completely dark and the only source of light is going to be the spheres. As these spheres emerge we want to work in the soundscapes as a reactive element to the rising and falling of heart-rate. If it heightens, sounds of chaos or anxiety will rise but as it drops you will move into pleasant harmonies and sounds. 

[deshan4thyear]

Peter Zumthor - Presence

“Presence is like a gap in the flow of history, where all of [a] sudden it is not past and not future.” (Zumthor, ArchDaily)

I really enjoyed this quote from Zumthor, this and his work shifted my perspective on architectural and general presence. Reflecting on the notion of presence and its direct interaction with being “in the moment”. 

[deshan4thyear]

Reflection - furthering the design

As we have begun to test into our experience creation I wanted to reflect on the processes and changing mechanisms of our design. 

We have been working at connecting the Arduino and heart-rate biofeedback to unity. Currently the latency is quite bad so Oscar is looking into the code of the design to decrease this. I have been working on creating virtual spaces to develop skills in the space making tools. I have also been looking into creating soundscapes for our particular design situation. Working together through this process has helped both of our understandings in each others research. The cross weaving of the skills and testing has expanded the breadth of knowledge in the design. 

As we have been discussing our experience we have been using the reference works of experiential artists such as ouchhh, peter zumthor and olafur olson. Our current plan is to have a situation of particles or lights that are effected by heartrate feedback. Also the use of sound in this to create more deapth in the movements and interactions of the spaces.

[deshan4thyear]

Diagrams exercise

For this exercise we were asked to make diagrams as a way to collectively capture all of the different working parts of our design. Diagrams are an effective way of helping people understand what your designing and provides a big picture. For this myself and Oscar combined all of our working parts to create some diagrams. These definitely helped in the hierarchy of the design ideas, sorting out which parts were more important than others and how this effected the overall function of the diagram and design. The diagrams were essential in the interpretation and making sense of the design.

[deshan4thyear]

Rock/Rockness test/reflection

Kohatu

A rock or Kōhatu was chosen as a key object to test into. This particular object holds personal stories but also mauri from its journey and various connections to the world. What I'm wanting to test specifically is its haptic qualities and whether I can induce a connection to this rock. I want to see if meditating with this object brings me closer to understanding its processes and entangled connections from the world. Recognising the kōhatus mauri could potentially be a good tool in incorporating haptic objects into virtual meditative environments to enhance cognitive alteration.

Story

The kohatu we have chosen is from the creek beds from Mount Ruapehu, my grandfather collected these rocks to use in his hang process. Through investigation of the kohatu we became aware of its story and the multitude of processes it has been apart off. The importance of this object and where it draws its mauri is through the many different interconnections it has had on its journey. From its original form as lava to its solidification and finally to its collection by my grandfather from its creek.

A part of this test included creating a script that builds off a design storyboard for a potential design. The idea of the script was referenced from Bruce Naumans body pressure performance where he writes a script for the user to become a part of his performance. (Nauman, Warmenhoven) He uses the script as guided instructions that immerses them into the space through mental and physical interaction. This same notion is tested through this script - a set of instructions that not only brings the user into the performance but also gets them to think about the interconnectedness of the kōhatu. The script is also a phycological test into how the user engages with a meditative state of being, based upon reflection and expanded cognition towards a non-human being.

Rock-ness/Human-ness

take a relaxed seated position

clasp your hands gently around the rock

note the way that your skin molds to its many bumps and grooves

note the blemishes and marks on the rock

consider the rocks journey to be here at this point

consider the inconceivably long life of the rock

consider the creation of the rock

consider the fragments of the rock that still reside in other places

consider the larger entity that this rock may have parted fro

consider the many entities that make up what we call the rock

consider the particles, and residue you leave on this rock

consider the particles, and residue that the rock leaves on you

consider the hundreds of other encounters that this rock with have

consider the hundreds of other particles now imprinted on the rock

consider the hundreds of other particles now imprinted on you

This exercise was written to engage with a meditative state of being, based upon reflection and expanded cognition towards a non-human being.

[deshan4thyear]

Experiential Art - Ouchhh

Ouchhh is a design studio that does a large scale of work from installation, video, performance etc. Notions and interpretations of developing technology and technology are at the forefront of their design. Their experiential art attempts to connect with users through immersive, sensorial spaces that are more than just video on a screen. As a precedent their work engages with inspiring design, focused on immersing the user and creating a sense of presence. The modes and ways of presenting their design helps me develop a sensorial approach to my own work. 

[deshan4thyear]

A4 page exercise

[deshan4thyear]

Site Visit - Places of meditation, Buddhist temple Stokes Valley

Through research of meditation and the idea of “being present” I was curious to test this notion through identifying key aspects of a meditative space. For this test Oscar and I went to the Buddhist temple located in Stokes Valley, Upper Hutt.

Upon arriving we entered the space being greeted by a small stone garden with the central building. We then walked up the passage into the bush to investigate the space. The site was embraced by nature, we were led by a passage through thick bush and wildlife. The sounds of birds and insects filled the air along with the fresh scent emitting from the bushes and trees. Once we reached the top of the stairs there was a large scale shrine with a lookout over stokes valley. There were multiple statues of lions and deities around the shrines.After walking around we walked back down into the main space where we were greeted by the locals and ushered into the main spaces of the buddhist monks. There was what seemed like an old small temple with a rock garden leading up to it. We then walked up to the main space where there was a courtyard with a deck surrounding it.

The visit itself helped me immerse myself into some of these spaces and identify some key aspects of them. There were many times along the experience when I felt present with not only myself but in the space.

“Presence is like a gap in the flow of history, where all of [a] sudden it is not past and not future.” (Zumthor, ArchDaily)

Zumthors notion of being present resonated with my sheer attention to the space. The most notable parts of the experience were the sounds - the insects and birds that filled the air, the trees swooshing together along with the river that rushed through the stones. I also found myself present with the spatial qualities of the meticulously created rock garden and the courtyard of the temple. Spatial qualities of the temple invoked a sense of presence distilled within the environments. This test helped me understand sensory spatial relationship with my sense of presence and environment. There is a potential in inducing present connection with self and world through spatial narratives.

[deshan4thyear]

Project Development - Meditation / Biofeedback Experience

Oscar and I have been working towards creating a experience that would allow us to test into the theory that we have been researching and also to make something that can be experienced in the symposium.

We have been thinking of building an experience for meditation that explores the connection of self and world through the use of biofeedback and virtual landscape design. 

The concept starts in a room full of chaos, there are projections of static on the wall that are accompanied by chaos sounds. You then engage with the vr and rest your hands on an object that focuses the chaos in front of you in a square screen. This is the start of the experience that then unfolds. We wanted the start of the experience to be crazy and chaotic because it builds a sense of anxiety, representing the chaos that goes on within our lives.

The experience then engages with a moment of reflection, this takes the form of biofeedback taking your heart-rate and translating it through an experience. The experience (which we dont know what will look like at the moment) will focus on the deviation of the heartrate and how that is represented in virtual space. This experience works towards creating a deeper interaction that changes the way you engage with the self and space.

This idea also delves into ideas of mauri - to situate the design we wanted to give context through the creation theory of the world, riffing off the idea of reconstructing self and world, thinking about how the maori creation theory could work into this. The process of te ao marama, tekore and te po were the key movement of this. 

[deshan4thyear]

An example of post architectural design provided by Daniel Fraga is a virtual reality landscape design precedent. Next nature habitat explores the idea of questioning our relationship with space through asking the question “What is your natural habitat human?” In this there are different landscapes, all with different types of settings and interactions that constantly shift your idea of humaness through design. This precedent provides a way of engaging with post architecture theory in design and how this manifests into a virtual design. This expands on what we experience in our base reality as humans and explores how different interactions and settings can explore new ways of looking at the self.

[deshan4thyear]

Virtual Landscape Test

[deshan4thyear]

Project Collaboration with Oscar

At this point in the research I wanted to take the embodied cognitive experience further than standard virtual reality precedents. Oscar was currently working on a project with theory around the extended body and embodied cognition. His research proposed a system that utilised biofeedback to measure body conditions and movement that extended their functionality further. The both of us discussed a collaboration that employed my research concerns of virtual environments and mediation and his system of biofeedback and the extended body. Within our pre-existing research we discussed and worked through different parts of our theory and frameworks that allowed us to align our research/testing to achieve a more profuse outcome.

[deshan4thyear]

Embodied Cognition and the Magical Future of Interaction Design DAVID KIRSH

Embodied cognition or extended cognition talks about the potential for expanding our cognitive processes through new deep interaction. This theory links in with previously encountered ideas of ontological design and creating tools that create us. Me and oscar discussed a example of this being like when you first take a photograph, especially after instagrams square picture format, we start seeing the world as compositions. 

“As technology digitally enhances tools we will absorb their new powers.” Kirsh, Pg.1)

This theory provokes thoughts of how this concept could be brought to fruition through design in extending the cognitive process. How new deep interaction can open the doors for new types of experience. In the collaboration of Oscar and myself, exploring this through biofeedback design, virtual landscapes and meditation. How can these concepts create a new experience that explores meditative reflection processes, weaving biofeedback information into a morphing, changing virtual landscape.