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Social Creatures

Nick Hardeman and Bruce Drummond, 03.23.10.

Social Creatures is an interactive audio-visual installation that aims to make users more aware of the act of creating their public identity. To create their ‘identity’, people use gestures to select a particular form and then interact with a pseudo-musical instrument. The instrument consists of eight visual zones that influence the shape and aural properties of the resulting entity. Once complete, users can name the entity using a mobile device, and then set it free into an eco-system inhabited by similar entities. In the eco-system, the entities react to one another, much like human beings in a social network. Users can use a mobile device to command various entities or cause environmental disturbances through simple gestures.

The physical gestures required of the users ensures a higher level of investment in the process, causing a heightened awareness of one’s creation, and thus oneself. Watching the entity interact with other entities is a reflection of our own interaction in our social networks.

Latest technical prototype, concept statement, look and feel prototype and interaction model for thesis.

Midterm Presentation:

Here’s the latest prototype Nick and me created for thesis. This was programmed in OpenFrameworks to prototype the following:

• Physics and attributes of the virus
• Virus attacking characteristics, not demonstrated in this video
• Amount of user movement required to create virus
• User interaction with virus

Here’s the latest iteration of our thesis abstract for more context on what we are working towards.

Humanizer – A Study of Humans as Viruses, Infecting and Mutating Systems.

Humanizer is an interactive audio/visual installation that explores the relationship between humans and systems. The state of the system is represented by an evolving audio/visual composition, projected on a large surface. Users can infect and mutate the components of the system with the human virus through gestures. This leads to evolving and humanizing the system, emphasizing humans’ effect on existing systems.

Another prototype for thesis – a refined squid and a new tick creature created in oF. Both are hooked up to Reaktor via OSC. The squid produces the screechy sounds and the tick produces the beats.

Here the speed at which the tick kicks it’s legs is controlled via a slider. The tempo of the beats produced by the tick are also manipulated at the same time. Created with oF, Reaktor and OSC.

The first prototype for thesis – hooked up Nick’s squid to Reaktor. The squid breathes and moves towards the mouse. OpenFrameworks sends OSC messages based on the squids properties to control 3 parameters in Skrewell within Reaktor – breath controls flow, x position controls filter and y position controls delay.