Infinite room is a media experience interactive installation. Users can interact with real objects in actual life to generate different physical feedbacks (such as vibration, strong wind, etc.). This work aims to allow users to obtain a new media interaction experience. Users no longer enter commands through the keyboard or remote control but produce relevant effects through actual physical items, which better shows a new interactive concept.
Relevant Tools
P5.js, Arduino, Rhino 3D, Unity, After Effect
My role
Programmer, Media Producer, Actor
Teammates
Zeshu Zhu, Cheer Chen
IDEATION
Changes in the physical world may result in a huge impact on the virtual world. We want to make a linear story that can be controlled by physical components. The story is about an infinite room, where a man is locked in a room and players’ goal is to help him out. Hand movements from users exert some influence on the virtual world.
Process
storyline：
We got feedbacks from the 1st play testing:
1. Why can’t players use multiple sensors at the same time?
2. Will previous effects stay on the screen? — Yes.
3. If I try the same sensor twice and there is nothing new on the screen, I’ll walk away.
4. Why each sensor can only be used once?
Hence, we decided to make an interactive movie.
Filming and Synthesis
In order to achieve the expected result, we decided to first record in the green screen room, edit the required parts, and then use unity to make the environment background and special effects we desired, and finally use after effect to composite. However, it is undoubtedly a great challenge to complete these in just one week. We need to learn the tools we need, but we overcame the difficulties.
Arduino Electronic Circuit
The circuit is also a significant part directly related to our work and the core interaction part. We will use the button as the trigger of the core interaction, the LED as a reminder to users, and the servo motor as the primary output purpose.
Coding
We used p5.js as our core programming language owing to its ability to better communicate with computers, thus maximizing the visual effect of our video and users’ interactive experience.
FABRICATION
For the fabrication part, we used Rhino 3D to model the 3D models we expected to visualize the final look, then used laser cut and 3D printer to carve them out, and then combined them with the Arduino and the circuit.
