Immersive

Hypermedia Reveries is a multisensory exploration of dreams, thoughts and reveries. The immersive installation invites the user to experience a hybrid mix of realistic and fictional collages made up of fragmented and splintered reveries. The multilayered narrative that is created in the physical space will transport the user into the surreal environment of the subconscious. The multifaceted experience emanates from a structured system consisting of an organized database of re-created dreams, thoughts and reveries, and a tactile interface device. The content of the piece is comprised of multilayered collages and enveloping audio, all created from appropriated media.

Hypermedia Reveries is presented in a small, artificial, immersive space. The dimly lit area is created by a piece of taut white fabric. The center of the fabric is pinned back so as to create a concave area on which the projections are seen. The area around the fabric is dimly lit in order to enable viewing and exploration of the digital prints of the collages, which make up the content of the dreams in the database. In the center of the space there is a small pedestal, and atop the pedestal is the interface device: a glowing dodecahedron. As the user enters the space, they will be able to pause and view the digital prints on the walls, but as they move farther in, they will encounter the glowing dodecahedron.

The interface device for this experience evolved into the dodecahedron through a long and complicated iterative process. The many phases of iteration led to the conclusion that an interface device that was visually and physically clean, inviting to the touch and one that would achieve the desired characteristics of interaction had to be created. Ultimately, a Plexiglas dodecahedron was selected. This iteration overcame many of the hurdles that presented themselves in the previous iterations of the interface device, for example, how inviting the device is to the touch, the overall functionality of the system and the condition/state in which the user leaves it. Ultimately, the dodecahedron turned out to be the best option.

Contained within the dodecahedron are 11 capacitance sensors wired to 11 copper switches. As the user touches the sides of the dodecahedron, the switches pick up the user's capacitance, the capacitance sensors are activated and the bs2 program tells the director program that one or more of the switches have been activated. The 11 sensors function as follows: two are specifically set to control the ambient audio of the space; nine are collage specific and are set to control the collage-specific animation loops and audio. When one of the two audio switches is activated, the director program controlling the system randomly selects an audio clip from a database of ambient audio clips. While there will always be an underlying ambient sound loop, the collage-specific switches will activate additional layers to create the overall aural experience.

Due to the multitude and variety of the dreams contained within the database, the collage-specific sensors will not always control the same thing when switching from collage to collage. In certain instances, there are more audio assets associated with specific collages; therefore, a sensor that may have controlled an animation loop in one collage might then control an audio loop in the next one. Contained within the director program is a conditional statement controlling the progress of the experience. Once all of the sides have been touched, or all nine collage specific sensors have been activated, the collage will remain in an active state until one of two things happens. Either the user must touch two sensors simultaneously to move on to the next collage or, if no interaction is sensed for two minutes, the system will "go to sleep" and reset itself. The system will remain in this dormant state until any of the sensors is activated again. Once any of the sensors is activated, the original cycle will repeat itself.

In order for the experience to begin, the user must touch one of the 11 sides of the glowing dodecahedron. As soon as the device senses that one of its sides has had human contact, a randomly chosen ambient audio loop will begin to play and a randomly chosen dream visualization collage will begin to fade in and be seen on the front flowing wall of the space. The rear-projected revelation of the collage is achieved through the use of a short QuickTime movie illuminating all of the collage pieces fading up into their desired places within the frame of the overall collage. When all of the pieces have achieved the desired opacity levels, the projected collage will then remain static.

In order for the experience to more forward and the immersive dream visualizations to begin, the user must provide additional tactile feedback to the interface device. As the user touches any of the 11 sides, either an animated loop will be activated or additional audio loops will begin to play. The animation and audio loops are collage specific and will further enable the user to enter the immersive world of the subconscious experience. Once all of the sensors have been activated and all of the animations have begun to play, the collage will remain in its dynamic state until the user then touches two of the sensors simultaneously. Once this is done, the present collage will begin to slowly fade out and a new collage will fade in as described above, and the process will begin again. If there is no tactile user interaction for two minutes, the visuals and audio will fade to black and the system will go to "sleep."

The bulk of the content of this piece was created using appropriated media, both in the visuals and the audio. The re-creations of the dreams were achieved through the creation of multilayered collages made up of images found using tangential Google image searches. In many cases, the re-created dreams turned out to be more visually powerful than any verbal description would have allowed. While many of the collages have been embellished and modified from the original dreams, the recreations evolved into visualizations that were more evocative and engaging than words would have allowed. The physical layers of the collages create a visually stimulating texture that enables many characteristics of a single story to be told in a single image. Every aspect of a dream can be told through tangential associations between the different assets that make up a single image.

It is not just the flat, two-dimensional image; it is a world created through both logical and contrasting juxtapositions and their complementary and disparate relationships. Throughout the entire process of creating this piece, the realization that technological simplicity mixed with evocative content is sometimes more powerful than elaborate technology and prosaic content became clearly evident.