In advent to leave an interesting story behind, we embarked on the journey of programming the Randy Pausch bridge. Our team is multi-disciplinary composed of individuals of different personalities and backgrounds, so we wanted our bridge light show to encompass that. In this project which only lasts a couple week we hope to create a light show that brings the CMU community together to reflect and creatively tune into the bridges story — not only personal and bold but speaking for itself as the voice of the CMU community. 

Our Creative Constraints

• Single line pixels 
• No sounds build in 
• Compositions are fixed: all interaction and improvisation is during development
• The show is light-only because there isn’t a permanent sound system on the bridge yet
• Typical model: 57 lighted RGB element in a row
• Physical reality: 422 elements in 57 groups
• Preferred delivery 228 x 8 at 30 fps

Team 

• Jonathan Loungani –  BS Computer Science
• Michelle Yue – BS Electrical & Computer Engineering
• Nicole Yu – BS Design
• Juhi Agrawal – BS Computer Science
• Vera Schulz – MS Integrated Innovation for products and Services 

Goals

We wanted to create a light show that is interesting to watch since it will be on repeat for a 15 minute duration throughout the night. We also wanted to encourage viewers and students passing by to stop and reflect on the bridge’s colors and animations – to be enraptured and inspire their creativity.

• Representative of all our identities and background.
• Should look cool and be visually engaging – change things up so people can feel engaged. – make people stand there even though they were not planning to.
• The show has to be cohesive.

Prompt

Working in cross-disciplinary teams, students will explore light as art, interactive design and programming using a Pharos lighting control system. Students will explore the use of light and interaction using the actual controls within the Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge. Student teams will develop final projects that will be exhibited on the actual Randy Pausch Memorial Bridge.

Initial Concepts

Top Current runner (One narrative arc): Mythological Journey Persephone and Hades

Premise: Our show would follow the story of Persephone and Hades, the ancient Greek myth that explains the origin of winter. The story incorporates a variety of distinct settings: the lively Spring, the dim and brooding Underworld, and the sorrowful winter, allowing us to clearly differentiate the acts of the story through the color palette we use in the show.

Since each Greek god and goddess is attributed with particular elements, the characters in the story also lend themselves naturally to being represented through abstract light motifs, such as a flickering electricity for Zeus, god of the sky, and they will allow us to explore the technical capabilities of the bridge. Finally, the themes of isolation and loneliness in the myth feel especially relevant as we are separated from friends and family by the ongoing pandemic, so we hope that the hope symbolized by the return of spring at the end of the story could be inspirational for the many of us who are struggling during this time.

Another Top Runner (Multiple narrative arcs): Mental Health and Animals

Premise: Represent behavior that we could translate into depression, ADHD, anxiety, or perhaps express different personality types, e.g. Ambiverts/Introverts/Extroverts. We would pick a lot of different things mental health or behavioral things, and try to represent them through sequences. The goal would be to have some sort of reflection on different mental health issues.

Winnie the Pooh: One possible idea for expressing this is to represent different characters from Winnie the Pooh, as each character has drastically different personalities. Each team member would choose a character each and design a show for the character, and we would make a combination of short stories.

Inside Out: Another possible idea is to represent the Inside Out character, who are directly associated with different emotions. We would not evenly split the show into 5 pieces , but instead have the different characters interact with each other like the movie. The reality of mental health is not black and white, so we may try to represent that in the show with black and white.

Another Top Runner: Current state of the world (COVID)

Premise: The show would abstractly display what happened during the pandemic. It could start off with a virus (red) growing at a really slow rate, and then exponentially increase, covering the whole bridge. We could also use 1d cellular automata to show the growth. As the show progresses, want to show the silence and then the chaos that occurs due to the feeling of hopelessness and loneliness created by the pandemic. Similar to the Love Me Like There’s No Tomorrow music video, we want to end showing the virus contained due to the vaccine, and display a hopeful future, possibly through shimmering/twinkling lights.

Next Steps:

We want to narrow down or combine the concept, we noticed that most of our ideas represent a larger theme that we can focus on – now we just need to settle on an idea! We also want to choose a project that can be successfully fulfilled within the time-constraints while complying with COVID19 regulations.