Head in the Clouds

– Final Documentation –

By Evan Hill, Wade Lacey, and Amber Paige

Inspiration and Course Connection:

This piece was inspired by multiple Zimoun pieces, we enjoyed the expressive movements derived from simple mechanics. Our goal for the piece was to create a unique and individual experience for each user. We conveyed a feeling of mesmerizing isolation, similar to how you would feel lying on the ground and looking up at the clouds.

The theme of this course revolved around using software and hardware techniques to create expressive dynamic behaviors, while encompassing the following question: what does it mean to be surprisingly animate? We believe that we contributed to this theme by creating a space which is surprisingly animate within the confines of the enclosure than you would assume by looking at it from the outside. By using simple materials, such as motors and paper, to generate movement and by creating an immersive environment drawing on sight, sound, touch, and even smell, our piece had a intriguing and unique user experience.

 

Construction:

To create the robot we built an enclosure made out of plywood and 2’x4’ pieces of lumber that encompassed the top half of the viewer and was supported on four legs, also made from 2’x4’s. Inside, there was lots of brown crumpled paper that was actuated by 40 servo motors. Our actuation system was comprised of these hobby servo motors and multiple micro-controllers. Each wall of the enclosure housed 9 panels, each with their own servo, all of which were hooked up to one mini-maestro, mounted to the side of the corresponding wall. The ceiling of the structure also had 4 panels, each of these panels was connected to the 10th channel of the mini maestro for one wall. The four mini-maestros were controlled by a single laptop via a usb port splitter. The Maestro Control Center installation was used to write the positions of the servos and put on a loop throughout the performance. Above the viewer in the enclosure, we mounted LED lights to the corners of the structure to add depth and vary color during the performance. The keep the experience private and surprising, we stapled black canvas to the exterior of our structure. This prevented onlookers from seeing what was happening inside without going in themselves as well as kept them focused on their personal experience with the enclosure once inside. Additional crumpled paper was hot glued in between panels to keep the modes of actuation unknown to the user.

The Experience:

The experience began with the viewer approaching the piece as a large plain enclosure from the outside. To enter they had to crouch down and walk/crawl into the enclosure or sit below it. Once inside they were fully surrounded by abstract  moving crumpled paper forms and color shifting lights. The paper forms twisted and crumpled at differing rates over the time of the viewer’s interaction. The space was designed to be reactive in a way that created a different feeling in each user; some felt suspense or overwhelmed from the constant motion while others were calmed by the experience. The depth of the space felt greater than the physical dimensions of the enclosure.

Outside view:

Inside view:

 

Feedback:

The feedback we got from our project was varied and cool to hear overall. While most people had something different to say coming out of our enclosure, almost everyone had the same question before going in, “What’s in the box?”. Our goal was to have the experience be unique to the user and the feedback we received shows that we achieved that. Some people were overwhelmed by the sensory stimuli of sight of paper, sound of paper crumpling, feel of the wood and paper, and smell of laser cut wood. On the other hand, others found the experience to be calming and some even spent prolonged periods of time lying beneath the enclosure to look up at it. We heard one user say, “I wish I could sleep in here”.

It was really cool to watch people spend leisure time in the enclosure, just having conversations with their friends, during lulls in the show. Additionally, while the experience was initially meant to be private, we found that people enjoyed the shared experience as well. Strangers and friends would get in alongside each other and talk about the piece together, comparing their initial reactions.

The comments we got from people walking out of the box were really fun to hear. It ranged from looking like “Oogie Boogie from Nightmare Before Christmas” to “the inside of an alien womb” and many more quotes. People were also very befuddled by and interested in how our piece worked. All in all, we believe that we succeeded in creating a mesmerizing experience unique to each user.