Digital Performance:
Experience you're house
My overall goal was to perform a live house tour where the viewer could experience the house and experience aspects within the house. Although I did accomplish my goal, I did face a few bumps in the road requiring a few adjustments to my initial plan.
Intro:
Growing up, I've always loved playing Minecraft— building houses, playing in survival mode, and exploring different worlds within the software. Playing in creative mode is my favorite because the possibilities are endless, and I'm free to construct 3-dimensional structures using material blocks provided within the software.
When discussing project one's parameters, my mind automatically jumped to using the Minecraft software as a conceptual base for my digital performance. I have a strong passion for interior design and interior structure, so I also knew right away that I wanted to project modern furniture with complementing color and texture within my Minecraft house.
Initial Plan:
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My inspiration for this project is my love for Color, Texture, and interior design!
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Using Minecraft, I will build a modern house where my digital performance takes place. Within Minecraft, I'd take a screen recording of the house tour, along with screenshots, that I will be incorporating furniture and interior into the video.
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All furniture and detailing will be apart of the visual aspect of my performance. By uploading the videos and screenshots in synesthesia/mad mapper, I can project colors and textures into the house and furniture, creating an experience.
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The house will include an entryway, a library/study/entry room, a kitchen and dining room, and a living room.
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The house's materials were blocks dark-wood, navy/grey concrete, and a white stone. All furniture is white or light-colored to allow for good visuals on them.
Start:
I started the process by building my house in Minecraft and recording my screen as I walked through the final product. Then I did a little online shopping on sites like Create&Barrel, Restoration Hardware, PotteryBarn, WestElm, and many others, where I saved images of the furniture I wanted to incorporate. Once I found all of my furniture, I uploaded them into photoshop, where I proceeded to cut out each photo's background, leaving me with the furniture and a transparent background. My next step was to find the colors and textures that I wanted to add to the furniture, but this is where I hit the first bump. None of my internet searches lead me to patterns or textures that fit within my vision. I also loved working with the software synesthesia and enjoyed the visuals that it produced. So my first alteration was to screen record myself playing around with synesthesia, where I could use that footage as the materials I'd project into the house.
Once I had all of the physical content— Minecraft footage, cut-out furniture, and synesthesia footage— on my computer organized in folders, I was able to begin putting it together. At this point of the process, I ran into another obstacle. The videos from my Minecraft house showed multiple viewpoints in each room while also altering each room's viewers' perception as the recording went on. In contrast, the furniture that I have found on the internet was only represented in one viewpoint. When I tried to perform the tour, the viewer would see confusion between a 2-dimensional plane and a 3-dimensional plane. I wanted the viewer to get the house's full effect throughout the whole tour, and pasting the furniture into the video would alter the viewer's experience. To overcome this issue, I decided to go back into the Minecraft software and build an interior using their provided materials. Although these materials didn't quite meet my vision's standards, it was, in-all, a more robust visual when it had fluid movement throughout the whole performance.
I did a lot of research on designing Minecraft interiors that I implemented into my
construction. Once I liked the look of each room, I restarted the documentation of the house. I record the house a little differently from the first time around, whereas I cut the tour into sections by room. Starting at the house entrance, I recorded myself walking up to the front door and stopped the recording as I met the stairs. I took a screenshot. I then made another screen recording of myself walking up the stairs and into the first room, where I stopped in front of the couch, looking at the wall, and stopped the recording. I took another screenshot and proceeded to follow this same process throughout the whole house, ending up with a total of 6 screen recordings and six screenshots to go in-between each video.
By breaking the house tour into sections and importing them into Madmapper, I was able to project my synesthesia footage onto the screenshots and turn the interior into a visual experience.
Performance:
Coming up with an idea for projection mapping and executing that idea are two completely different things. I had already faced a few obstacles, and I hoped that my revisions to my original concept allowed me to perform my house tour. I began the performance process by creating a timeline of the footage I had and organizing them in layers. The layers I included was the Minecraft videos, the screenshots of rooms, and the synesthesia videos. I watched the screen recording, making the exact second as to when my projection would play. I then organized the synesthesia footage according to the room and writing down the time of each video. After I had the data, I uploaded all my content into Adobe Premiere and edited all the footage and screenshots— long enough to match the synesthesia video— into one clear and concise video.
With one final video, I uploaded it into Madmapper and setting it as the background. Watching the video play, I'd stop it at each "paused position" within the house to map out the visual content I had. Sizing and scaling each video into their designated rooms and lowering their opacity's finalized the setup process. All I needed was practice on the time aspect of the performance.
TimeLine
Play "Human" by Sevdaliza
Start background layer: 0.0
Turn up opacity in entry: 4.0
Turn off opacity in entry: 25.0
Turn on opacity in first room: 32.0
Turn off opacity in first room: 85.0
Turn on opacity in kitchen: 92.0
Turn off opacity in kitchen: 123.0
Turn on opacity in living1: 119.0
Turn off opacity in living1: 124.0
Turn on opacity in living2: 128.0
Turn off opacity in living2: 164.0
Turn on opacity in dining: 171.0
Turn off opacity in dinning: 192.0
Final Outcome:
I was very pleased with my overall performance of the house tour and I really enjoyed the song “Human” by Sevdaliza I choose to play in the background. Although I struggled with timing in the first 25 seconds, I feel as though the rest of the performance was flawless!
