Thinking like a game designer or an instrument builder?
Hans Speijer
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I have been thinking about an important question we need to answer. Who is our target audience and how will they interact with the installation? The way I see it we can go in two directions with our design, we can either make the perfect VJ console that is targeted at visual artists to compose realtime visual creations on the cube and treat our design process as a quest for the perfect visual instrument. The second approach we can take is 'everybody is an artist' which would mean we 'dumb down' the interface and make accessible and fun for anybody who walks up to the console. In the second scenario the interface becomes more like interactive games that easy to enjoy after about 10 seconds of getting basic understanding how they can affect the colours, patterns and motion in the cube.
Of course we can do both approaches by putting an 'advanced' switch in the interface which transforms it from a toy to an instrument but I feel that initially we need to focus on either one of these core philosophies and discover what they would mean in practice for interface design.
I have some ideas for light games you could play like a 3D Pong or breakout game in the cube or specific light effects that would allow you to launch 'fireballs' or 'fireworks' in the cube.
I also have some ideas where we could have scenes inspired on words like 'waterworld', 'blazing pit of hell', 'tranquil space plasma', etc. These themes we could pre program and have the visitor choose by choosing some evocative visual image which they would then select to put the cube into that mode.
ROZIER FABRICE · Mon 16 Jan 2017 11:03AM
Hello Hans.
I am thinking like a software development strategy, which be divided into several lots.
=> First lot: Dumb down version, in order to satisfy the public of an open events to famillies, where everyone, even kids, would be able to select an effect, send it to the cube, and personalize the movements. Like a game, yes, where 2 people will be able to DJ the light effects, a little bit like on Madrix current version.
=> Second lot: maybe make it better in the future, once we have some experience, credits and reward on the first version.
Then there is no limit on the evolutions we will be able to do in the future, but first things first : We need an easy too use and funny version to command thee effects by the "common" people.
Thank you for asking.