Maya Churi

Download Thesis Paper Here

The PATH ----- Launch Trailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn’s (2006 Emerging Fields) Creative Capital supported game, The Path, is inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, set in the modern day. The player controls not one, but six incarnations of the red protagonist. A story about growing, choosing and losing, The Path does not offer the player challenge through complicated game rules or grand goals. There is one rule in the game, and it must be broken. There is one goal, and when you attain it, you die. The Path is a psychological trip that is highly unsettling to some and gloriously revealing to others. Will you choose the path of needles or the path of pins?

For more information:
Story website: http://grandmothers-house.net
Trailer: http://ThePath-game.com
Development Journal: http://Tale-of-Tales.com/ThePath/blog

Game available at:
http://Tale-of-Tales.com, http://www.direct2drive.com/, and http://store.steampowered.com/

I've been working on the animations for The Tree this week. Take a look at the first one...

Click Here for Animation

Things are on track with the physical interface. The base is being put together now. We've decided to go with a simple pedestal for the base - which is different from the moulded plyood design I'd originally done. We made this, hopefully temporary, change to save time before the thesis show.

The piece of plexi-glass you see below as cut to support the Tree controller. The cut-out is for the photoreflectors.

The physical interface for The Tree has been cut! There were a few snags, mainly the 1 inch crack that occurred. Since we are cutting against the strongest grain of the tree - a choice we made in order to keep the look and feel of the tree slice - this was always a risk. Fortunately we can fix it.

Happy New Year everyone!

Lately I've been playing with stereocards as the potential backgrounds for The Tree. After discovering the piece of Ash that we will use for the physical interface I started thinking about how we can use the largest ring - the one with the bark - to control the backgrounds (the environmental history). Today I created a background using the stereocards. I am experimenting with the idea that the backgrounds could be controlled by the largest ring - moving in a circle much like the smaller "memory" animations that would match up with the figures in the background.

Tree History Panorama

Today Gene and I found two slices of an Ash Tree.

We can make 4 or 5 rings out of the two slices. The diameter being between 12 and 13 inches.

These are beautiful pieces of wood. The rings are defined and the colors are rich. We also found two slices of maple - which is a harder wood - but the rings were not as strong and the colors muted. Hopefully the Ash will be strong enough to withstand the cutting process.

In my previous post I wrote about the physical interface prototype. Today I am working on the backgrounds for the animations.

I've been experimenting with different backgrounds. I've done some pinhole photography and some flat color and texture designs but none of them felt right. I started thinking about history a little more and the stories that exist in pictures from the past - particularly in stereo cards which document a wide range of subjects.

So, given that inspiration I went to the local flea market last Sunday and picked up a few. They tell some wonderful stories about trees, people, what people take from trees, the environment and war.

I did some basic tests with the animation I already had (the background images have not been touched up. Take a look at two versions.

Single Background

Double Background

My thoughts are that if I imitate the starting point of a subject in the stereo card image it will give users a guide as well as create a cohesive story between the backgrounds and and the animations that take place.

Here are two possible starting points.

Turpentine

Logger

I love this image because of the way the soldier is looking at the "tree." I wonder what he's thinking. And wouldn't it be wonderful if he got up and carved something into the trunk of the tree?

Solider

And what about projecting in stereo?

Today I went to visit with Gene, a friend and woodworker who is building the physical interface for The Tree. He created a three-ring prototype to figure out the best way to get the rings to move and to play with different types of wood. We discovered a few things during this visit.

1) It won't be possible to use an actual cross-section of a tree as the act of cutting apart and drilling into it will weaken the wood (most wood when used is cut length wise not across as I had initially wanted). We went to a wood shop and figured out that we have two choices. We can either use a piece of Baltic Birch plywood or a single piece of maple. The choice between the two is purely aesthetic. The plywood will have a more "modern" look and the maple could potentially be more organic feeling and looking. I am leaning toward the maple but have yet to make a decision.

2) The rings, the way they are currently put together, do not move completely independent of each other. This was a concern that Andreas had brought up when I discussed the original mechanics with him. Currently, there are ball bearing balls in between the wood pieces. It would require the user holding some rings steady while turning others.

Watch the video

This is of concern to me but also interests me. There could be some positive outcomes of this mechanic. Firstly, it would promote cooperation between users and secondly, it would force users to think about what they were doing before taking action. I won't know specifics until the prototype rings can control an actual animation which will happen sometime in January.

Andreas had made another suggestion which was to have each ring attached separately to the pole in the middle that holds the ring up with ball-bearings. The challenge with this is that the sensors would have to be far away from the circuit to which they are attached by long wires. I am worried that this will make them less stable. If anyone has any thoughts on this let me know.

3) 5 rings may be too much. The prototype is 3 large rings. I am considering keeping it at three or making it four with a fifth ring in the center which does not turn. As I finish storyboarding this holiday I hope to have a better sense of the right amount.

Gene at work in his shop:

Over the past few weeks I've done a number of experiments to determine how the tree "sees." I created a digital pinhole camera and took a series of photographs then experimented placing inverted photograms onto the pinhole images. The effect is that of a "burn," much like a memory burned onto the tree's rings. Each burn represents a moment in time, caught in a silouette snapshot. Throughout this process I've continually thought about the affordances of the tree. I kept asking, "What does the tree control?" And I kept coming back to one thing, "The tree controls its memories."

The core idea is that the "tree" (in the form of you, or I) can control these various burned memories, placing them into its field of view - much like a stage - and the various memories will interact, irregardless of scale (which changes depending on the size of the tree when the memory happened). Animations affect change of the subsequent memories.

For example, if a mouse comes across a dandelion it bumps into it and the seeds blow away. The next time the dandelion is placed on the stage there are twice as many. If the mouse did not bump into it there would only be one the next time around.

The memories will explore the collision of cultures - plant, animal, human - and our effect and dependence on one another. There will also be magical moments, taken from stories and mythologies, that work their way into the life of the memory.