Category: capstone2019

 
When was the last time you felt free? When was the last time you felt totally comfortable in your skin without the fear of being judged by others? That’s right, it was either when you were drunk or still walking under the table. Would you want to change it now?
If you answered “yes”, then you are in luck. Dance Euphoria offers everyone a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to feel free and wild in a Virtual Reality setting. Since we are all pre-occupied with our daily problems, Dance Euphoria allows for one of the best stress reliefs: dancing. By using advanced technologies such as motion capture, 3D modeling, VR and 3D animation, Dance Euphoria offers what no other VR project on the market does: freedom of expression in a safe environment where nobody is going to assess or criticise you. You can be you. If you want to laugh- you can; if you want to jump- you can; if you want to sit back and just enjoy the moment- you can，什么都可以 (everything is possible). Dance Euphoria’s mission is to remind people how liberating it is to just be. Sounds interesting?
During the creation process of Dance Euphoria, I have made a startling discovery: people do not know how to control their bodies. They feel awkward when moving the way they want to. Why? It is because we have been raised with the notion of dancing being something for “professionals”. People are used to the “fact” that dancing is not for everyone, hence, using it as a way of decompressing does not seem as a solid option for the majority of people. People tend to shy away from dancing while being watched by others. However, as soon as they realise they are alone, they let themselves go. This is exactly why Dance Euphoria is a great starting point for dancing comfortably: you are fully immersed in the world where everyone else is dancing stupid and funny. You automatically start feeling better and more relaxed just by watching the silly moves of the dancers. In a way, you learn what it is like to be free. The immersiveness of virtual reality in conjunction with 3D characters and VFX videos add to the overall atmosphere of lightheartedness that promotes self-awareness.
The bigger problem that Dance Euphoria addresses is people’s inability to live in the now. We constantly feel the pressure to be productive, active, and successful. As Bill Watterson, a famous cartoonist, once said: “We’re so busy watching out for what’s just ahead of us that we don’t take time to enjoy where we are.” Since dancing is one of the greatest ways to feel your body, through accentuating inner impulses, it automatically makes you forget all your concerns and fears that do not exist in the present moment. You just are.
This way, Dance Euphoria is exactly what you are looking for.

 
Magic of film is a platform that enables users to generate their own movies. I was thinking about the visualization of a certain culture and help people to convey the features of their cultures. So that’s why I was thinking of using the landscape of the country and the picture of the user to represent the culture. I want to enhance the cross-culture communication part in my project and thus help people to convey their own culture and also gain a better understanding of other culture.
The music and the puppet show together with the audience’s voiceover created an unexpected outcome. It created a sense of humor that I wasn’t expecting. First, I thought that it might be the puppet or background music. However, after I have done some research, I figured that the according to the analysis data of Harvard Business School researchers, the percentages of the human brain receiving external information through five senses are 1% taste, 1.5% tactile, 3.5% olfactory, 11% auditory and 83% visual. I actually figured that visual is a great way of conveying the message. Thus, helping people to visualize and convey the features of their countries is the core of my project. Also, when I was conducting interviews, lots of people wanted to visualize the features of their own countries and make a movie. However, they don’t have the skill set that was needed to make a movie or they find it was too much trouble to do so. This project is an easier way for people to generate their own video project and share it with others. Especially for students and expats who felt forging in another country and wanted to adjust themselves into the new country and also introduce their original country to others.
When I was doing projects before, I never thought about project significance and also how people can share messages in both directions. I believe that not only should cultures be introduced to other regions; people should also learn how to start a culture exploration by themselves. This is a good way of keeping people learning and shift from passive intaking to active learning. Having people voluntary learn about another culture is crucial since it will certainly raise the joy of the process and help people to gain more.
Furthermore, this project is more subjective rather than objective. With the development of the internet, people can google all the information about a country with few seconds. However, I found that it’s also extremely important for people to get some objective information, like what do other people think of their own cultures. So that people can learn about a culture from more perspectives instead of merely data and other descriptions that can be found on the internet easily. This will leave a deeper impression on people and help people to be more empathy and also associate themselves to the culture that they want to know more about.
However, there’s something that I can defiantly improve. This time, I focused too much on the technology difficulties instead of the user experience. I had lots of difficulties in terms of OpenCV, mailing authentication, video export, image search API, playing the reference video when doing the voiceover etc. However, the buttons was over sensitive and I was not giving enough instruction to the users. Since this is something that I hope to live beyond capstone, I will sure polish the user experience afterwards.
Next time, if I am doing another project, I would be thinking more about the user experience and find some solution to optimize the code and provide a better user experience.

 
For many people, “Please choose one” is a familiar prompt asked on a multitude of questionnaires, applications, and surveys. A variety of categories follow, encouraging you as an individual to subject yourself and your experiences to one predetermined box. While the phrasing of this question certainly limits and confines the experiences of many different people, multiracial individuals are especially impacted by the subjectivity of these categories. If you are half Chinese and half Mexican, how are you meant to choose between these two facets of your identity? Should you even be made to choose?
Outside the Box aspires to shed light on these experiences of multiracial individuals whose identities are consistently categorized and imposed upon by others. Emulating the configuration of familiar forms which implement this line of questioning on race and ethnicity, the installation challenges users to re-evaluate and re-examine their own role in this process of categorization based on appearance or judgements. After taking a mannequin in hand and placing it into its respective box, users will hear one audio clip featuring the voice of one individual who has been boxed into one of the aforementioned color/race/ethnic categories by others.
The candid color categories that are implemented in this project have been carefully curated to symbolize “race” based on past scientific and scholarly conceptions of color terminology. Each box is labeled either black, brown, red, white, or yellow, and each mannequin is painted a mixture of two skin colors, thereby disassociating inherent notions of categorization based on monoracial identity. Race as conveyed through this project is explicitly and purposefully embodied through color, as color terminology used by prominent naturalists such as Bernier, Kant, and Blumenbach served as the basis of propagating constructs of race based on skin color.
Traces of these color categories and labels are present even today, as embodied through government efforts such as Directive 15 and the U.S. Census. While many other projects tackle this topic from a self-identification standpoint, this installation is unique in that it addresses the lack of agency many multiracial individuals feel is produced as a result of their ambiguous identities. Audio clips are only played once triggered by the insertion of the proper mannequin inside its respective box. For example, a black and white mannequin will only play inside either the black box or the white box. Placed inside any other box, the audio clip will not play. This interaction, or in some instances lack thereof, also forces the user to categorize based on appearance, as so often happens with multiracial individuals upon first glance.
In an increasingly multiracial world, it is pertinent now more than ever for projects such as these to bring to light the consequences of forms, applications, and other documents in reducing individuals to fixed notions of race and ethnicity. People are much more complex than they appear upon first glance, and this installation encourages users to critically examine the labels they choose to adopt and apply to others in their everyday lives.

 
Hot Dog: 101 –– A Dumb Name for a Smart Interactive Webcomic
For a majority of Americans occupied with daily life, the time and emotional investment needed to understand U.S. politics is simply too much. Why bother with dry, erudite articles filled with terms you don’t understand, when you could instead be doing something that’s low effort and high reward, like browsing social media, playing games, or reading webcomics?
“Hot Dog: 101” is an interactive webcomic that seeks to reduce the effort of comprehending political news for the average Internet user. It’s something of a prototype to test a research question I ask in my Social Science major capstone: how can front-end web development features be applied in practice to lower political information costs for working class Americans? So, don’t solely get distracted by the dumb name and cute doodles –– “Hot Dog: 101” is designed to integrate a strategy on three theories of media interactivity: technological, narrative, and social.
“Hot Dog: 101” features two sections of comics in different interactive forms: “the Daily” and “the Depth.” The first section covers daily headlines in four-panel comics with interactive web elements for sharing and learning, whereas the second section contains comics that are longer-form and implements game-like web interactivity to stimulate cognitive processing. “The Daily” is a webpage containing four-panel comics on daily headlines. Upon mouse-hover, assets may be animated (like a character within a panel) and more information will appear in a tooltip, such as context or citations. The idea behind this section of content is that this can be easily shared on social media: simple, static comics on daily news that some people may not have read had it not come across their feeds. “The Depth” will implement more interactive elements as it need not be created as frequently and will cover more information. Imagine reading a comic that reveals and animates as it scrolls, with opportunities to clock for more information and type input to interact with the system. Using React means that individual components can be easily integrated for a variety of interactive elements that don’t need to be hard programmed.
I take a webcomic approach because comic panels are static enough to be shared across platforms, but also versatile enough to integrate interactivity. Webcomics on social media are becoming hugely popular, offering readers a medium they are already familiar with. Furthermore, four-panel comics can be consumed instantly, unlike text or videos, and can also be made for long-form visual explanations. Webcomics are also extremely accessible narratives, they do not require specific hardware or even applications. Using a JavaScript UI framework ensures a browser-based experience (whether desktop, mobile, or even just on social media) and minimizes loading times or user learning curve.
The main character and mascot of “Hot Dog: 101” is Sam, a dachshund wearing a hot dog bun backpack, acting as narrator/host to the website. The design of Sam conveys an “all-american” and informal first impression, as well as emphasizing a simple, abstract cartoon style for universal appeal and relatability. Not only will readers find little offense in a cartoon dog, but they may also find it cute enough to create participatory works or to share social media posts (ie. social interactivity).
While there are many websites or applications out there to increase political efficacy and decrease information costs, these resources will still encounter certain pitfalls. Some remain too text-heavy, others create too much of an emphasis on partisan issues, or even the mere mention of “politics”, which will turn away a disengaged individual immediately. Video/visual political content also have problems associated with medium: news satire shows or documentaries demand too much of a time commitment; political cartoons are quick to digest, but are too topical and rarely educational; short-form videos like those of Vox or NowThis do not have narrative or humor to get viewers invested. This project is to attempt an unfilled niche, a political interactive webcomic, as another potential solution to lowering information costs.