Category: capstone2019

 
What is the definition of human in virtuality? Does it have to look like us? Does it have to move like us? These are all questions I believe my project is raising but does not give answers to. Deconstruction addresses these questions by deconstructing the body right in front of the eyes of the viewer, animating from a clearly human to a geometric cloud controlled by pre-recorded human motion. In the screen based 2D web experience, the pieces of the skin will fly in every way, so it will be still be the recognizably human body – only in pieces.
While the graphics offer endless options to experiment, by name “virtual reality” suggests a search for creating something believable, something that is hyper realistic to satisfy the fantasies that are impossible in reality. The virtual space gives us a kind of freedom we don’t use enough for art purposes, as most projects are to create a more entertaining reality such as video games or even edgy music videos, in a way we are copying and enhancing our own material reality. And meanwhile painters and other 2D visual artists took upon themselves to explore and expand on the body as a medium and what it entails, the new era of virtuality lacks this kind of experimentation, although the artists of this new era are the ones who could take this exploration one step further.
I believe for the sake of the concept, firstly, it is important that the movement data I am using being rooted in human movement. Since I am interested in observing whether even an abstract shape can be seen partly as human, the movement had to derive from a real person. Secondly, for inspiration of the “deconstruction”, I looked at cubist painters such as Picasso’s Girl with a Mandolin (1910), Metzinger’s Dancer in a Cafe (1912), and Duchamp’s Portrait of Chess Players (1911). They have disembodied the body in their paintings in order to make it the representation of the fluidity of time and consciousness. Although, their purposes were different, I realized their method was computer friendly. It made me to return to the very building blocks I used to build the body piece-by-piece, only I teared it apart. I hope the thought they think about after viewing will be whether there is embodiment in disembodiment, but the beauty of abstraction is one cannot control the thoughts a piece triggers in the end. Either way, I only hope to trigger something in people.

 
There are many games that don’t have clear and playable tutorials, such as auto chess, which give me a hard time when I first play them. I can’t quickly know how to play these games and in order to continue playing, I have to search online for the game guides written by others. There are also a lot of dissatisfaction with the tutorial from other people’s evaluations. Although I noticed this, I didn’t really think about the importance of the game tutorial until I made the game myself. I made a collaborative game called Super Guardians, which requires two players to do some actions together in order to beat the monster or protect themselves form monster’s attack. However, players won’t know what they should do without the guidance of a tutorial. So when doing user testing, players needed my explanations and instructions all the time, and this also distracts them from their gaming experience a lot. So my purpose is to make an in-game tutorial. The process explores good ways to embed game tutorials into games, to make tutorials clear, and to smooth the transition between tutorials and games.
From research I learn that there are basically two types of game tutorials, one teaches players everything before the game starts, and the other teaches little by little during the game process. The latter one is more suitable for longer or more complicated games, so this one is what I need. “Super Guardians”is now made into levels and before each level begins the tutorial for this level will appear. There should be a boss level at the very end with no tutorials, this allows players to fight with the monster by themselves. Tutorial levels build the knowledge base for the players, and players have to show in the game process that they have mastered the things taught by the game in order to enter the final boss level. Besides, the tutorial includes simple animation of stick figures and small amount of text.
Tutorials can be seen as one of the most direct ways to feel a game. In recent years, the game world is developing rapidly. Statistic shows that in 2004, there are only seven games released on Steam (a well-known digital distribution platform for video games) worldwide. The number slowly grows during the next nine years, and after 2014, the number of games released on Steam increases sharply every year. By 2018, up to 9050 games were released on Steam (Statista), and these data are just the number of games released on one single platform. Therefore, if a game is to stand out from such amount of games, all aspects can not be neglected, and the tutorial is also an important part we must pay attention to. One successful game example is “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (3D)”. It is the perfect embodiment of the “bit by bit” tutorial style. Players learn different skills every time they enter a new map. Zelda and its tutorials are both very successful, and they are both examples I can learn a lot from.

 
Four Stories About Social Media
-An Interactive Film About Social Media Addiction
Four Stories About Social Media is an interactive film that explores different types of social media addiction. The viewer can decide how they can proceed the story by clicking on an icon such as a phone and a smiling face that leads to different directions of the stories.
When social media becomes increasingly accessible and user friendly, it has the potential
to dictate people’s lives. One will notice that most people are on their phone when they wait in the line, take the subway, etc. Although, social media helps people to communicate, it has become a place where people are trapped into and constantly bombarded by new informations, while pretending that nothing else matters. As an online communication tool, social media can lead to anti-social (lack of communication in real life). For example,: people would rather to communicate online instead of talking face to face. To a more extreme circumstance,; they focus on their phone even with the one they love is sitting right next to them. If the primary goal of social media’s user experience design is to not ‘make the user think.’, therefore, social media has the characteristic to invite people to become addicted to it. Four Stories About Social Media makes people recognize their addiction to social media and to think about it differently.
Interactive film is a non-linear storytelling form. Unlike traditional film and plot-driven games, it provides users with an immersive and interactive story experience. In Four Stories About Social Media, the user experiences two different modes of interaction, a parallel mode and a choice mode. When using parallel mode, the user can flip between two versions of the same scenario to see how the protagonist behaves with or without their phone. The first story, I’m Starving, is about a girl who always takes photos of everything about herself and shares them on social media. People can switch back and forth to see how two parallel stories: one in which she cannot leave her phone and one in which she enjoys her life and food happily. The second story, Her Birthday, is about how social media addiction impacts our most intimate relationships. The couple in the second story face, touch and kiss each other when they do not have phone, however, when they start browsing on social media, they turn around and become indifferent and even communicate with each other online, even though they are only half a foot apart.
While parallel mode allows the viewer to compare two versions of the story automatically and simultaneously, choice mode offers the user a more complex plot and diverse experience. The third story, Go Back to the Phone, portrays a guy that is talkative online but is deeply socially anxious in reality. The viewer can choose how he reacts when his datemate asks his opinion and how he will behave when the situation becomes embarrassing and awkward, and therefore leads to different endings. The fourth story, Interview, takes place outside a job interview. The viewer can choose questions for the protagonist, a social media stalker, to ask: one will involve very professional questions that shows he did some research of the company; the other one will involve some awkward and inappropriate questions that come from his experience of stalking the interviewer’s social media account.
The form of interactive film allows the user to experience how life will look with or without social media, what social media addiction looks like, and how our lives are impacted by it. By clicking the icon to switch the stories or make the choice, you will be the protagonist and make life changing decision. decide how you will behave in the situation. By exaggerated acting and dialogue, the film conveys the concept in a comic and expressive way. Ultimately, it prompts the viewer to realize the side effects of social media and reflect how they can avoid social media addiction.

 
An interactive dreamland is created for the audience in this project, while the audience will be able to see his/her shadow on the screen in real time and manipulate his/her own body to interact with the things in this dreamland through moving the body. As soon as the audience stands in front of the screen, the magic rabbit will jump out and guide the audience to get the magic wand, gain magic power and enter the dream. After entering the dream, the audience can use the magic wand to interact with things in the dream and find ways to leave the dream. In the switching of the stage, I gradually increased the use of color, so that the audience can gradually get rid of the dream. Once you successfully leave this dream, the audience will see images of the real world on the screen.
Once the audience is standing in the monitorable range set by Kinect, it will launch the skeleton tracking program and present the audience’s shadow on the screen. Meanwhile, the program will automatically attach the magic wand image to the right hand of the shadow. At this point, the audience can use the magic wand or move the body to interact with the things in the dream. In addition, these things will change visually once the magic wand is close to the things that can be interacted. This is the working principle of the magical experience brought by the project or the audience.
The significance of this project is not only to bring the surprise interactive experience to the audience, but also aims to guide the audience to think about the definition of “dream” and “self” through such interactive effects. At first, I just wanted to simply create a dream that can be interacted. But gradually, I think that this project will subvert the audience’s subversion of the definition of “self-identity”. This project can help the audience realize some experiences that cannot be realized in real life, while the addition of “magic wand” is actually the subversion of the audience’s actual identity. Moreover, the use of shadow can obscure the audiences’ definitions of gender, age and ethnicity, etc., while ensuring that they can recognize the “self”. Therefore, it can be said that the use of the two elements allows each audience to abandon the definition of his/her established identity and experience an unprecedented magical dream.
In conclusion, the realistic significance of this project will be broad and not be limited by age, gender and region. In my research on mainstream art and cultural works in contemporary and modern China, I found that the definition of “self” is harsh and has a strong practical significance in contemporary China, so people’s definition of “self” is subject to multiple constraints from self, family and all sectors of society. Unfortunately, people are getting used to this pattern. I really hope that this project can become a relaxing place where people can be free from the constraints of identity definition and unobstructed by reality in a modern society that is dominated by realism.