Category: Rudi

“DISTORTED” – Made by Ariana Alvarez – Professor Rodolfo Cossovich

The path into finding my idea and truly developing the concept was an extensive one with various ups and downs. I defined interaction as the process in which an agent interacts with another through an action-response process, however with a purpose beyond “looking good”. For this reason, initially my research was more assistive technology oriented, as I wanted to create an object, or develop a game similar to a “hackable” and the xbox adaptive controller which redefined technology and interaction in games. Nevertheless, later on, after attending the Machine Learning workshop and conducting more research I found projects such as ‘Soul Mate’, which changed my inclination. ‘Soul Mate’ is an old radio developed by Vytas Jankausas, which uses text synthesis to read potential romantic partners on Tinder for agents that interact with it, therefore it is a new way of “finding a partner” in a rather non-traditional and outdated presentation. Another project from the same artists was ‘Breaking Views’, a television that displays Instagram stories from feed and collects how many times they are viewed from the agent who’s using it. Both these projects are part of a bigger collection called Domestic Media, in which the artist wanted to critique how new technologies change the way we live and socialize, and to do this he used old technologies in a social media spectrum.

Another project that I encountered which redefined my idea was the Project Implicit “Implicit Differentiation Test” developed by Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington. This project aims to measure the strength of associations between concepts and evaluations of people tip races (eg. white people, good), with the final goal of exploring hidden bias within the users, and that way taking one step in understanding the roots of stereotypes and prejudice in society. 

After analyzing both project ideas that seemed quite diverged, I decided to address a problem that was more close to me and my personal identity, which is race. Using Vytas Jankauskas ‘old technology’ concept, I decided to redefine my project  by creating a vintage camera that showed how despite racism being an ‘outdated’ idea, it was still present in people’s minds and kept on “implicitly” defining us through labels even within college application processes.

CONCEPTION AND DESIGN:

Regarding conception and design, I had very clear since the moment I decided to address “identity” as part of my project, that I wanted to immerse users into a photographic experience. Therefore, the idea of putting them in a “photo booth” type of atmosphere was what initially sparked in my mind. I used this approach after observing how the excessive amount of photography’s and selfies that are being taken daily are what really influence people’s image of their self.

However, as I was choosing the materials to work with, I realized that it wasn’t going to be as easy to manipulate and would end up being too big for people to really grasp onto the purpose. Therefore, I decided to make this idea into a smaller, easier to laser cut version of a vintage camera, which contained and webcam, Arduino and breadboard inside. 

The interactive experience was planned to be as follows:

1. User approaches screen and common application question of “Choose the race you identify the most with” appears
2. User takes a possible “ID” picture with the camera 
3. Picture is “processed” based on race consideration
4. Image reveals redrawn with racial labels and slurs
5. Follow up-experience to immerse user into the problem (Videos of news and testimonies)
6. Final message about the goal of the project

FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION:

The most significant steps in the production process was first and foremost figuring out how to create the effects I wanted to in processing, and how to manipulate pixels that same way as well. My initial idea regarded changing a persons skin tone with an inverse filter. However, as I felt the message wasn’t being delivered as strongly as it could be, I decided to change my idea to a rather more descriptive, specific, one.  Therefore, I redefined the idea of pixel manipulating the image that a person took into a more conceptual one. By this I mean that, whenever a person would take a picture of themselves on the webcam inside the camera, then their image would be redrawn with labels and slurs regarding their race. This translated into processing meant using the same idea of drawing ellipses with the original image’s color, but instead of ellipses or shapes, it is words. 

Before the user testing I used to only have one racial slur for each race/ethnicity, however after the user testing I added more labels for each image as people told me that it would be more impactful to see different points of view. Another aspect that changed in the production after user testing, was the user experience, as I also included real-life testimonies of experiences and news of college and racial labels in people’s daily lives. Both of these adaptations were included so that my project goal of making people more aware of racial labelling in college was actually addressed. The experiences for each of the races finalized as following:

Native American

Asian

African American

Hispanic

Whites

Processing Code:

https://gist.github.com/arianaalvarezv/42d333e9eec30b2b7acff6d187745ca0

Arduino Code:

https://gist.github.com/arianaalvarezv/a6de259cce73b1f837e6d7d0975787c3

CONCLUSIONS:

The main goal of this project was to create awareness among a general audience about how the outdated idea of racism still exists today in many aspects of our life such as racial labelling in college applications. I further wanted to show how these different stereotypes are distorting our identities by putting us into certain groups that we may not even distinguish ourselves at. Therefore, the project was also meant to serve as a critique against the college application system for basing admissions on race as well. My project aligns with my idea of interaction as it indeed involves an action-response relationship between user, screen and camera. The user inputs a response and picture, and in return processing responds with different outputs in redrawing the image and videos. However, even though it does not completely align with my definition of interaction as it does not serve the purpose of helping someone else, it still has a purpose beyond being a “pretty camera”. It has the purpose of educating people, or at least easing the “racial labels” conversation, as nowadays it is a very hard topic to talk about without offending anyone else. 

Based on the final presentation and the IMA show, I was very happy to see the positive audience’s response to my project. It was very interesting to see how they initially were hesitant to interact with it as they thought it was merely a “cute camera”, but later on when it redrew their face with very strong labels, their face changed completely and understood somewhat the message I wanted to convey. I received much positive feedback and comments for further improvement. 

 

If I had more time, I would improve the scope of the project, maybe make it on a bigger screen, or have more options for multiracial users. As well as I would have probably included more statistics on the consequences of these racial labels after college in places like the workforce and family income. From my setbacks I have learned the importance of developing a strong concept before initiating a project, and ensuring it is something that you are passionate in working for and researching about. As well as the importance of immersing users into an environment that is familiar with them as well, that way they can understand your goal better without having too many doubts. Whereas from my accomplishments I can take away the different ways in which technology and interactivity can be used to prove a point, and how the scope of projects that can be done and created is beyond what is learned in class, and the more curious and playful you get with code, the more things you discover you can do that will help your project. 

This project was of great importance to me, as it is an experience that I have faced before personally. There have been instances in which my identity has been distorted based on the racial labels regarding my race. For this reason, I wanted to bring it up upon the public eye, not only for awareness, but also for action. I believe that the reason why everybody should “care” about this topic, is because they need to acknowledge what’s going on first, in order to address the issue. Everyone thinks that “racism” is outdated as “everyone knows it’s bad”, however, has it truly disappeared? Is it truly nonexistent? It is not. Are we still labeled based on stereotypes? Yes we are. However as long as we don’t let what others think of us distort our identity, then we are taking one step for action against racial inaction. 

REFERENCES:

https://vjnks.com/works/5/somestic-media

https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/test-yourself-for-hidden-bias

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/iatdetails.html

The development of the project involved a lot of back and forth, trying to balance the strong and sometimes abrasive message and the technological aspect, which needed to be simple enough to let the interaction speak for itself. For the survey, I originally had a list of 20 statements, which I edited down to 14 after some users said that the experience stretched on a little long. The goal was for them to be relatively short and simple, both so they could hold users’ attention and so they were answerable by the target demographic, most of whom could be assumed to have a basic working knowledge of the subjects. Within this process, I determined how the monitor should respond to certain answers, and the most effective ways of subtly giving users the sensation that they were being surveilled or that there were “right” or “wrong” responses. I wanted this idea to build over time to create feelings of unease and panic, without ever outright stopping a user from answering as they wished. Although the camera light comes on immediately, most users don’t notice, and the most dramatic reminder of surveillance is when a live video feed is actually flashed onscreen. This made people duck out of view and even want to stop the simulation. This is the danger of self-censorship–that varying methods and degrees of conditioning will push someone to omit, adjust, or change their opinion entirely. In the final step before beginning to code, I sourced images to flash in between statements, some of which were pulled from news coverage, and others that I took myself while in Hong Kong.

As far as other design choices, I knew early on that I wanted the response mechanism to be relatively simple, something where a user can choose only between a yes button and a no button. This is, first, to mimic casting a vote, although I wrapped the ballot box in trash bags to show that an individual opinion does not particularly matter when the CCP is creating policy. This is also to show the lack of much gray area in China in terms of what is acceptable to discuss. It seems that, more often than not, issues are clearly divided into safe topics and taboo topics, and there is very much a right or wrong stance to take. I originally coded the replies with keyPressed just to get everything working, then moved to the push buttons. I also had to adjust the code so that users could only record one answer for each statement, and added a counter so that the “safe” and “warning” tallies would correspond with the responses. For the processing interface, I used simple, black and white typewriter text as well as red flashes, photos, and live video feed (without really storing data) to, again, reinforce the “safe” or “warning” answers. The other consideration was to use more physical elements to drive the interaction, like placing little protestor or police figurines on pressure sensors in order to express an opinion. Ultimately, I decided that less was more, because I didn’t want to distract from the intensity of the statements and the need to make definitive, perhaps controversial, responses to them.

ILFinal

In the end, my project did align with my definition of interactivity as something that goes through multiple cycles of input and output between audience and product, and ultimately challenges the user in some way. Based on my observations of people using it, the experience was intuitive in its design and impactful in its message. It could be argued that the project is not interactive enough, and that the yes and no push buttons could be changed to something more meaningful or engaging. If I had more time to develop this idea, I would like to make it even more immersive, incorporating sound or light displays to draw attention to the user for “wrong” answers.

The most challenging moment of development was when my computer crashed and I lost the majority of my code. This happened on the Friday morning of user testing, which meant I was unable to get the full experience, although I did have a few people try my rewritten code on Monday and Tuesday. All in all, though, I learned a lot about the nuances of Processing, serial communication, and developing an interactive experience that blends technology and social issues in order to challenge an audience.

As I said in my earlier essay, I think this project is unique in that it addresses a particular group of people, who face all the nuances and challenges of attending the first joint US-Sino university. Our student body is in a position to both observe the affairs of China and to bring international perspectives and standards into our considerations of these issues. We have a distinct ability on our campus to discuss and debate topics that are taboo in wider Chinese society. Therefore, my goal was to take real-world current events and issues that are of huge concern to students in our position and force users to reconsider not only why they believe what they do, but how strong those beliefs really are when they are challenged, explicitly or implicitly. Watching people go through the survey, I believe my project did achieve its goal.

Auditory ‘Temple Run’ – Jackson Simon – Rodolfo Cossovich

Conception and Design:

I started off just really wanting to create a game, and through conversations with Rudi “Temple Run” came up. I was not about to create a replica of an already made game, but I had this idea that “Temple Run” could be turned into a pure audio game. Audio of a direction played would let the user know where to go, instead of having visual aid. At first, this audio game  was intended to try and potentially help visually impaired people in some way (perhaps helping them know which way they could move in a day to day life, while walking down the street, with the directions being said out loud). However, this was quite presumptuous seeing as I do not know people who have lost, or never had, their eyesight. Therefore, I could not accurately figure out what best way to aid them. The game then turned into an inclusive game, allowing both people who can see, and those who cannot, to be on the same playing field and enjoy themselves. 

Fabrication and Production:

In the beginning (for user testing), I neglected to emphasize the experience of being blind for those who indeed were not. In fact, I started with a joystick as the means of going up, down, left or right. After the feedback I received, it was clear that I needed to switch the way of interacting with the game, and after conversations with Rudi: I decided to use an accelerometer attached to a headset with ‘blinding’ glasses. This allowed for an amplification of the dulling of senses. I realize now that a gyroscope might have been easier, and more successful, in reading the directions (now attached to the way the user moved their head) and in user usability. I believe changing the way the user moves directions, while having their eyesight dulled (for users who are not visually impaired), made it so that a sort of equal ground for playing games was added. Plus, it made it more fun and interactive in a different way then just a simple joystick.

Conclusion:

This game was meant to be able to be played by visually impaired and non-visually impaired people alike. My definition of interaction doesn’t necessarily involve a back and forth: it could be, for example, just reading a book, the words interacting with your brain, however, your brain doesn’t necessarily interact with the book. In the case of my game, there is a back and forth: the sound with the user, the user with the accelerometer (and by extension the game itself). Therefore, my game adheres to my definition but also expands it since there is more than just a singular interaction (which I believe is all that is needed for something to be called an interactive exchange). The audience therefore receives a stimulation, and causes a stimulation themselves. 

If I had more time there is some definite improvement that I could’ve done. For example, improve the ‘blinding’ of non-visually impaired people (even after tweaking the glasses multiple times you could still sort of see through the corner of your eye) and also make sure that the directional readings were as perfect as could be (they worked well, you could definitely get ten points by going in the right direction 10 times, but it still was a little off at times). It has taught me that the experience had by the user for a game is paramount. I got complaints about the uncomfortableness of the headset (which definitely could’ve been made to be nicer), which leads to people not necessarily wanting to where it: which means they wouldn’t play the game! If I were to make another game, similar or not to this project, I would put more focus on the experience (even though I had people that did enjoy it and have fun at the IMA Show) and not just the idea behind the game (even if it is still important).

So what? Why should people care about this project? It definitely did accomplish my goal to a certain extent: a level playing field, no matter if you can see or not. I feel that equalizing the way games are played, while enhancing user experience, is a goal all games should strive for.