Category: capstone2023

 
Emotions play a significant role in our lives. Unconsciously, negative emotions and thoughts can impact our thinking patterns and behaviors, thereby affecting both our mental and physical well-being. Defusion, in essence, involves creating distance and recognizing thoughts and feelings for what they truly are—streams of words or passing sensations—rather than accepting them as absolute truths or imminent dangers. The Cognitive Defusion Guide, provided by the Counselling and Psychological Services at the University of Sydney, offers helpful strategies for practicing defusion. One such technique, called “Type It Out,” encourages individuals to visualize their thoughts on a computer screen and experiment with different fonts, colors, and formatting. Drawing inspiration from defusion and the concept of Type It Out, my project aims to provide a meditative and interactive experience of defusion through manipulated visual text that represents participants’ negative thoughts. To accomplish this, I utilized Touchdesigner, an ideal tool for audio-reactive visualizations. While deviating from my original plan of using breath as input, I discovered that capturing the sound of breath proved challenging due to its subtlety. Consequently, I decided to switch to a blow interaction, which surprisingly yielded a more intuitive effect of “blowing away” with the visualization. Additionally, this modified interaction method still retains the calming qualities associated with deep breaths. In a dark, immersive environment, I have created four distinct scenes that facilitate visual distanced defusion, complemented by immersive audio effects. By engaging in the act of blowing and taking deep breaths, participants can find solace and tranquility within their minds, while the negative thoughts and emotions they input as text are intended to be distanced and alleviated through this immersive visual-audio experience.

 
Miniature Booktopia is an interactive immersive installation that investigates the complexities of reading in mixed realities: a multisensory physical experience and an imaginative textual universe. With the advent of new technologies and media, the mediums for accessing books have been diversified, from traditional printed books to television adaptations, theatrical performances, portable e-books, VR, and more. While some readers believe that digital tools facilitate reading, others oppose digital reading, arguing that the tangible interaction and collectible value of printed books are eliminated. Therefore, this project takes an innovative approach to reading that addresses these modern challenges of convenience and immersion brought about by the digital age, while preserving the essential traits of printed books.
The project consists of a 3D-printed interactive miniature book along with several tiny book cards that emulate the uniqueness and collectible value of printed books and upholds the tangible experience that is essential to reading. Alongside, there is an immersive projection that displays the imaginative universe based on the texts and extends it to external spaces and perceptible dimensions. The tiny book cards are the blueprints for future books which could be portable and lightweight, tangible and unique. The interactive book retains the physical interaction such as flipping the pages, and detects when the book cards are being inserted and pages are being flipped, thereby responding with projections whose visual elements and soundscapes are generated according to the text. The texts come from a chapter in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, where the protagonist first encounters the magnificent, mysterious and somehow terrifying Gothic architecture of Northanger Abbey. Installed in a dark space, the audience can be fully immersed in an adventure of a stormy night at Northanger Abbey.
By integrating these two interdependent realms through Jane Austen’s literature, I want to envision a new model of reading that enables a unique collectible presence, a new human-book interaction, and a full-body immersion. Moreover, I also want to challenge the male-dominated literary industry in the late 18th and early 19th century, in that women’s literature was historically considered domestic and not appropriate to public spaces such as art shows and galleries, and was considered a “low genre”. In this context, reading women writers’ books in public spaces appeals to equal attention, evaluation and respect from the literary community. Ideally, this project could be installed at the Jane Austen’s House or Jane Austen Festival as an alternative digital way to experience Jane Austen’s classic works.

 
This VR project offers a digital tour of the Manjushri stone carvings in Mingshan Temple, Sichuan, China. The stone carvings were exquisitely made, yet due to their low popularity and remote location, proper preservation has not been conducted, and many parts of them have already been destroyed by erosion.
Compiled in Unity, the scene consists of the virtual reconstruction of the stone carvings made by photogrammetry using the photos taken on-site, as well as other assets to create an immersive experience for the viewer. It includes three scenes: the first scene shows the title of the project, the second one is the main scene where the visit takes place, and it ends with a credit list. The viewer can walk around the second scene freely using the controller and do some simple interactions with the scene, such as clicking. The information board will appear showing the background information regarding the subject and its neutral or even feminine style of iconography, which is an important topic as the feminization of bodhisattvas in China has been a widespread trend since Buddhism was first introduced in China. However, the most famous example of a feminized image is Guanyin, though other bodhisattvas including Manjushri are also one of them. The statue shown in the project is one vivid example: it is depicted with a soft and neutralized face and shows no obvious masculine features such as a beard.
By using digital methods, the project first engages with the topic of the feminization of the bodhisattvas in China, especially of Manjushri, whose feminized image is less known and studied. Though often untouched, the feminization process of Manjushri is worth further research. Second, the project attempts to explore the possibility of the modern preservation of cultural relics that have already suffered from erosion and experiment with the process of digital documentation, restoration, and exhibition, in order to increase the site’s attractiveness to visitors and document digital images for future research.

 
Narratives in any form strive to bring the audience into the world that they are creating and make the audience feel as though they have a part in that world. When a narrative is translated to a theme park attraction it is condensed and only explores a fraction of the world built in the narrative. Too often theme parks focus on how many guests can rotate through an attraction per hour rather than the individual experience that is created with the story and the guest’s placement within it. Individual emotions when experiencing an attraction with other people are overridden by the group’s emotion.
The Protagonist Experience strives to make each guest feel like they are the main character in their own story by having the unexpected twist of being separated from the group. After being separated they are unable to rely on the safety and shared ‘fun fear’ of the group and must venture into their own adventure as the sole experiencer. Omniversal Escapade is a theory of how the Protagonist Experience can be translated to the narrative within a theme park attraction. Taking into consideration limitations of an attraction (ex. guests flow, accessibility, young guests) the integration of physical and digital elements (spatialization of tangible sets and screen displays), and attraction stages (ex. queue, pre-show, loading zone, ride, and exit), my project is portrayed through an audio narrative and physical model of the attraction’s design. While Omniversal Escapade is meant to be in large scale format of a theme park attraction, its current format of the audio narrative and model has been created to focus on the narrative and design elements highlighted in the Protagonist Experience theory. This original world-building story is centered around the destruction of the omniverse. A group of experts on the various dimensions, as in the guests riding the attraction, are called to traverse the omniverse and stop the Nylus Dimension from invading the other dimensions. During their journey they are unexpectedly split up and must take on the main character mantle in each of their stories until they reunite and are able to share their individual adventures with each other. The audio narration is recorded by voice actors and edited using Audacity Software. The physical model is a mix of static interior design, LEDs to guide the audience, and controls for which the audience makes their seat and final decision choices.
The fascinating point of this project is that Omniversal Escapade is only one translation of the theory of the Protagonist Experience. This theory can be explored and adapted to multiple attraction narratives so that each guest experiencing the attraction has a unique point of view that they can share from a first person perspective with the other members of their party. This furthers the discussion about the design of the attraction and creates a longer lasting impact on the guests rather than a typical one and done linear attraction.

 
*Reflections/Reclamations* is a project that examines the experiences of American Chinese Adoptees as they use images of their past to reflect on their memories and identity as an adoptee and a Chinese person. In her book “On Photography” Susan Sontag writes, “Photographs furnish evidence”, but in the case of many adoptees this could not be more untrue. When understanding their adoption and upbringing, adoptees only have the stories they’re told, family archival images, and their memories—leaving ample room for one-sided stories. This amalgamation of half-truths, one-sided perspectives, and hazy memories often leaves adoptees feeling a sense of otherness, disconnect, and loss. This project aims to explore the dynamic of photographs and memory among American Chinese Adoptees today by giving them space to examine photographs from their past and process the emotional truths behind meaningful images.
The project focusses on interviews conducted with five American Chinese Adoptees as they present photos throughout life chapters that resonate with their understanding of their adoption and “Chineseness”. The final form of the installation utilizes projection mapping on a zigzagged screen to simultaneously show two stories at once. Creating a chaotic and overlapping auditory and visual experience of the adoptees’ voices and photographs, viewers walk across the left and right to experience the adoptees’ stories. To contrast the non-linearity of memory and the linear presentation of history, the images are presented in both linear, reversed, and non-linear sequences. While one side may depict a photo of the confusion and innocence of childhood, the opposite image may depict the importance of community, language, or self-expression as an adult.
Creating a dual channel video and audio experience creates an interaction that necessitates viewers to physically shift between angles to see and hear the adoptees’ stories. As they move between the physical angles, they experience a shift perspective, narrative, and timeline. Until focussing solely on one story at a specific angle, the viewer sees an incomplete picture—an unintelligible mess. Without careful consideration, our memories can fall into these blurs. While photographs cary different meanings to different people at different times, this installation aims to give voice to these adoptees in this moment. If viewed with intention and focus, their photographs and stories are reclaimed.