So Converge night has come and gone! And Intergalactic Jams was everything it lived up to in the end.
Challenges
Getting in nice and early helped greatly in ensuring a stress free process. Only a couple of minor hiccups which occurred but where no big issue.
Once we cleared all chairs and obstacles in the space it was discovered that the usb extension would be over a metre too short to reach the users table with the sample pad and leap motion on. This was worked around by placing the table closer in and more side on to the drummer. In the end this served its purpose in a better way compared to the original intended position, which was further back and front on to the centre of the room and drummer. Being closer and positioned more like a player in the band gave a stronger ‘jam’ kind of vibe.
Even though we ended up running vision from a seperate machine, it turned out that Vizzable was too heavy on Lyle’s MacBook and resulted in video totally freezing up and not displaying correctly. The fix was putting up a random last minute youtube video of space videos on loop to display during the performance. This worked just as well but would of been more effective if the intended purpose for the sample pad hits triggered different video clips.
Another technical difficulty we faced was the Leap Motion not serving its intended purpose very effectively. Users could not really work out what it was unless they were told and even then, when they interacted with the device it was very unresponsive and its effects weren’t really audible or impressive. This was a let down and took away a bit from the interactive possibilities with the installation.
Audience Engagement
Overall I was quite pleased with the audiences response to the installation. I think everyone used it how I invisioned users would be, so there weren’t many surprises there. I feel our biggest bonus to audience attraction was a good location with loud sounds coming from it that attracted a few groups of people. The average duration people would spend varied a touch, but I would probably say around 2-5 minutes.
Having lights and a loud PA definitely contributed to its appeal. I found that musicians appreciated the installation more and spent more time with it, improving etc. In saying that over 70% of visitors were musicians/box hill students so that worked in my favour. I figured it would be quite tricky to work out what was actually happening if you weren’t musically inclined or at all familiar with instruments/performance. There was a stage during the night where I addressed the room and gave a quick rundown of how everything worked and what not.
Initial Idea vs Finished Project
So in this case the initial idea was not too far off from the finished project at all. It was mainly those few challenges that arose on the day that prevented this. If those little things worked as planned it would pretty much be that as designed.
Elements from other installations that I could incorporate
Karl Fee’s ‘Kinetic Ripple’ installation which incorporated a Leap Motion I felt was done very well. The interaction with the device felt quite smooth and satisfying the way he coded his max patch the leap motion had a meaningful and effective interaction that I felt Intergalactic Jams was lacking. So that would of been great for some of my intended effects to have that same level of reactiveness shown in Karl’s.
Harrison Martin’s installation had a very impressive visual element alongside his mechanical audio drum machine display. Executed within Max MSP, having reactive visuals to incoming sounds being triggered. This could have been an alternative to having different space clips triggering, and might of been less heavy on processing resources and even more impressive for a display like mine.
Overall Project Observations
In terms of project management a couple things I can say is that, I found that once I teamed up with Lyle for our collaboration it was great because it gave me more motivation and inspiration to complete the project. It was also a great thing to have two heads working on a project like this not only for workload but our skill sets were a good fit. I would work out the code and signal flow and he would work on the piezo fitment on the drums and make suggestions for playability, sound, design etc.
It was also insanely helpful that we got to work together quite a lot and actually setup our functioning installation multiple times prior to the exhibition. This was great in understanding changes that needed to be made and to iron out problems and future speed bumps. This is always a crucial part I’ve found to any setup/installation/exhibition purely due to the fact that all surprise problems reveal themselves, ones that you would of never imagined that would be a problem can be a big factor in the end result. Whether thats realising you need a certain length of cable or an adapter that you don’t have etc. A lot can change in practice once you setup something up in a space. Just way too many variables to account for in planning on paper.
Video and Photos
Lastly, having this being the first time ever designing, planning and executing an installation at an exhibition night I felt it turned out being quite a good display which people enjoyed. There was a lot of things to learn and figure out during the entirety of this project. One of the main areas which this subject has been most beneficial in training would have to be problem solving and troubleshooting. Really learning how to break down bit by bit a problem and knowing what steps need to be taken in order to reach the end goal. In conclusion, Converge was a fun night where everyones installations came to life at long last, and this was great to go around and interact with classmates displays and see everyones long hard work pay off into impressive interactive audio visual displays.
Zollo Sound 