SOMA is an interactive art installation exploring an idea of control of people in a society, what its main causes are and in what form said control is manifested. Generally, control can be viewed as self-inflicted as well as imposed by an outside party but here they’re explored as if society is an extension of our individuality, mind, and body (A. Watts), therefore, there’s no separation between the types of control.
The final concept has been reached through iteration cycles consisting of discussion, prototyping, and criticism and the conceptual journey this project embarked on has been remarkable due to a wide range of ideas and mediums of presentation explored. Each idea has been enquired into under two lenses: meaning and technological means of conveying an idea. That approach allowed us to probe into drastically different mediums so that we would have a solid understanding of various art forms and how they can be applied to a concept our group is fully satisfied with.
The final piece is a combination of ideas about societal control from a novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and a simple yet engaging technological demo from eelslap.com allowing an audience to control an animation by moving their mouse cursor along the screen. Huxley’s novel showed his characters being controlled through a drug Soma, endorsed by the government, that they willingly take whenever they feel unnerved. The drug is available only in the civilised part of the society, the uncivilised territory reserves to pain and self-harm as a control method. We decided to use a video, later turned into a GIF, projected onto a wall as the medium and have represented control and submission by submerging young kids, brother, and sister, underwater. An audience has to decide who of them is sinking by operating a lever that in return controls a GIF, there’s no middle ground, both kids can’t be under or out of the water at the same time, that way the audience is presented with a decision they inevitably have to make.
by Trak Gray, Matvey Tarchutkin and Tobias Heeringa
This is the final footage we’re going with (out of 12 in total, can be viewed here, was initially shot in 720p 120fps), the middle of the video depicts both kids half submerged in water and gives a neat effect as the lever, which is weighted to its center, pendulums back and forth as it comes to a rest.
The final processing sketch works perfectly well, all we have left to do is make a few changes to a lever system to make it as presentable as possible.
16.05.17
The lever is coming together. I prepared all the metal components, and did some tests with axle at different heights to see how it swings. Having the axle only slightly off centre means it pendulums back and forth very slowly and for a much longer time, meaning it should look dynamic in the final installation. Everything is ready to weld as soon as I get a chance to do so.
On 14.05 Sunday we have filmed all the footage we needed for our project, the main difference from a test footage we’ve done a few weeks prior was us lowering young talents into a pool horizontally and not upside down. There were a few reasons for this change:
We came up with a more eloquent solution which Trak built: a rig allowing us to position a person horizontally to capture the water rushing in or out of their face as they’re being lowered into a pool with a GoPro strapped above their head. It also has a space behind actors’ heads for sliding in a piece of plastic that acts as a background for easier post-editing.
Toby and Trak were in charge of submerging our actors while I was doing camera work — a task I was happy with as I didn’t feel enthusiastic about jumping in and out of cold water for a few hours. The time before filming was somewhat tense for the team as we had to do multiple trips around the city to get everything we needed (GoPro, SD card, kids), but that unnerving state has quickly disappeared when we met our actors: Luca and Elissa, 9 and 14 respectively, extremely energetic kids who were doing flips on a trampoline between the takes. It seemed as if they’re never tired and the whole experience of working with them has most definitely brightened up my day, that means a lot to me as usually I’m lost and awkward around kids. You just can’t help but get infected with their joyous playful attitude.
Now that the filming was done, our next step was to build a final version of a lever system. Up to that point, the only material we’ve considered was wood, something we’re familiar and confident with working, but after visiting 3D labs for design advice we saw an enormous amount of metal scraps that would fit our needs perfectly and we’ve ultimately decided it would be better if we welded it. It would make our device not only stronger and more stable but the flexible nature of the material allows us to experiment with a design more. Moreover, I’ve never done welding before and it’s something I’d be interested learning, what a perfect opportunity.
Overall, this project had a very interesting concept development road and at first glance, it’s difficult to connect our initial idea with what we have now. We started out with wanting to make a difference in NZ’s society by trying to tackle one of the myriads of problems but essentially ended up with an art installation after realising that bringing awareness is something we can realistically hope to achieve. I, however, believe that the final idea wouldn’t be as strong if we didn’t go through so many concept iterations and am very happy with how it turned out.
Today was short on discussions but rather long on making and testing things. It all started with Toby showing the prototype he built with Arduino and Processing that was able to scrub through the video with a potentiometer, the problem was that the scrubbing wasn’t smooth at all and the whole thing lagged quite a bit.
At this point, we changed the format to GIF in hopes to ease things for Processing and sure enough, it worked well after Stefan helping us out with mapping potentiometer values to GIF frames, lags were gone and the GIF played smoothly. In a matter of ~2 hours, we had a fully functioning prototype with only one problem: high-resolution GIFs that are ~100mb in size don’t play, so that puts a constraint on video quality, surely we can think of a workaround. Toby and I decided to move on to construction a physical prototype representing a lever attached to a potentiometer that a GIF is controlled with as we wanted to get an idea of what it’ll feel like before building the final iteration.
Before finalising on an idea of using a pull lever we’ve considered a wheel, a chair that a person sits on and spins around in, a pulley, a button, a slider and a bunch of others. We’ve ended up with a pull lever as it’s not only the easiest one to build, but also makes the most sense in the context of the project. I personally associate levers with something bad/sinister as they remind me of Frankenstein or all those cartoon villains leading heroes into traps and that’s what we wanted to do with the project, partly make people feel responsible for their actions as well as feel conflicted about whether they actually did something wrong (thus characters in the video being tranquil underwater yet disturbed when out on the surface and not the other way around).
The prototype we made today uses a pendulum action with a potentiometer attached at the axes, the weight at the bottom is meant to add resistance to the lever. When let go, the lever swings back and forth eventually stopping in the middle, therefore, looping a GIF in a dynamic way. This prototype helped us identify a few weaknesses:
1. Lever resistance is not enough and it doesn’t actually feel like you need to make much of an effort to move it. We’re also considering of moving the axis down on the lever to see if it’s a better approach.
2. The rigidity of the construction, we need to make it durable enough in case people will want to swing the lever with full force (according to our assumptions and feedback they actually will).
With every team discussion, a new approach is being adopted and today is no exception, we have moved away from artefacts from the future to something different while keeping the word “dystopian” in our project description and continuing with a satirical theme. We’re basing, but not limiting, our installation on Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. We’re particularly interested in the wonder drug “SOMA” and with what intention it was used. While Huxley discusses such interesting aspects of the dystopian society as psychological manipulation, separating society into classes from birth as well as utter disgust for family values, it’s important for us to keep a satirical outlook and we thought that SOMA fits our needs the best.
SOMA is the perfect drug in every way, it’s “euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant” but without any side effects. There’s only one aspect to it - it’s being used as a distraction by the government and makes people content/happy with the way their world works. It’s possible to compare SOMA to the real world drugs - opioid mixed with anti-depressants and hallucinogens (yet somehow without adverse effects), however, it’s not what’s important, but the idea that people numb themselves every day in order not to feel or rather feel “happy” is a reality in our society. I believe it’s a perfect opportunity for a piercing social commentary - it’s a very clear, relevant concept that is easily overlooked as it’s in people’s nature to strive for contentment and happiness, only it’s difficult not to fall into their deceiving counterparts.
The purpose of this whole project from its very beginning was to give said piercing social commentary, we’ve tried it in many ways but we weren’t happy about spoon-feeding the audience; we started off looking into extremes and then somehow ended up in the middle ground which failed to do the very thing we wanted - provoke.
We started discussing our current approach, which we’re finally sticking with, by focusing on 2 extremes. Novel’s main character John is taking SOMA like any other citizen of the World State, he also uses a switch/whip to beat himself into feeling the “right feelings”. We ended up not combining those 2 things but rather focused only on SOMA due to the whip not adding much substance to the project’s message but adding quite a bit to its complexity. Besides, we simply felt it’s juicier to tease out one thing to the extreme rather that 2.
And this is what we’re actually doing. The current idea for an installation: video on a screen and a pulley/lever. A video will present a person with their head underwater, they look content and trouble-less akin to when people take SOMA to escape reality; water is a symbol of calmness and tranquility. When someone pulls a lever, a person on the screen will be pulled out of the water and will start screaming and flailing, representing discontent with what’s around them. The trick is that the video is upside down.
To produce the video we’ll use a GoPro with a harness construction attached to the body and Trak and I will be lowering Toby into a pool, later we will most likely improve the method, but it’s good enough for testing purposes.
…in the dystopian New Zealand. One of the artifacts that my team has brought from the future.
Our ever-evolving approach/idea has been changing and taking 180 turns, those changes might seem completely random to some, but to me, there’s a perfectly clear line of thinking and one ever-present aspect - satire. Actually, the idea isn’t changing as much anymore, it’s the approach that becoming wackier each time.
A group task for the last week has been to come up with a few satirical posters poking fun at NZ’s issues, I’ve done 4:
1. Now even you can afford to live in the city centre
2. On the verge of poverty? Get more domestic workers
3. My ad campaign is FIRE
4. Water shortages? Shower with your girlfriend (empty image on purpose)
Our initial take on the issues was a bit more grounded / timely, however Tobias’ idea of turning excessive methane emissions into a commercial product set off a huge discussion on how these current issues might be presented in the future. The discussion was mainly focusing on extremely consumerist dystopian New Zealand set sometime in 2050. The date was later pushed another 100 years forward since it granted us more freedom to be wacky with ideas and approaches.
Moving away again from a chosen presentation medium, posters, we realised that most of the issues we poked fun at could be presented as physical artefacts, namely satirical objects from the dystopian New Zealand of tomorrow. An idea for the installation theme sprang naturally, the premise for it would be that our group somehow traveled into the future and was able to bring a few artefacts back to our time, which includes, but not limited to:
1. A radio playing ads, news, and infomercials of the future
2. A jar of methane that’s sold as a commercial product
3. A cardboard box representing an accessible option for a place to live, a “house of tomorrow”
The same day we tried prototyping a few quick ads for the radio by pretending to be a show guest, a street passerby and a host on a radio show, we discussed 3 things mentioned above. I quickly realised that scripting the dialog will go a long way as I was not experienced in improvising lines and using satire are especially challenging.
Sometime throughout the discussion, a movie Demolition Man (1993) starring Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes was mentioned. The movie screams 90s but the plot relates to our idea of an exaggerated future: The future is so bright that police officers need only to look after occasional graffiti and people crossing streets on red lights, in a case of a more serious issue they would hardly be able to do anything. A prisoner from the past wakes up from cryogenic sleep, so a cop from the past has to be woken up as well to deal with the problem. The plot provides a reference point and a similar direction to our exploration of NZ’s satirically dystopian future.
Using satire for the sake of satire, how fun is that! We played around with the idea of how we can portray it, initial idea was that we represent one issue, but with different levels of satire, from slight to extreme. Then we ended up with 2 possible approaches:
We picked the former for testing purposes because it will be much easier to get into the mood and develop prototypes of the same medium, posters.
There was another important decision: focus on issues either specific or directly affecting NZ, since people will be able to relate to them more. It came from our assumption about people not caring enough about a recent Russian legislation that decriminalises domestic abuse; while horrible, it’s happening on the other side of the world and doesn’t affect people in NZ. It’s more of a philosophical debate really, as to should we do something (and whether we can actually make an impact) about things not directly affecting our immediate lives.
isthisprogress
Well here we are, just one week left. Pretty scary ain’t it?……
To be frank, I have never been at this state before; where things look like they will actually be done before the deadline. Currently, I have been working on trying to fix the suspicion meter fixing the bugs of area 2, finding why the the Guard AI stopped chasing the player, getting the AI to move to Area 2, manipulating rigs to create a static mesh of a pose, adding sound and UI elements.
In the past, problems would have occurred by now that where I had to scrap down the project by now and would have yet done a play test. However, with this team I find ourselves overestimating many tasks and underestimating a couple others. As a result, we have worked hard to get it done. I have mixed feelings towards this project, where I am not really that into it due to it not matching my vision; yet I am proud to have something that might be fully functional for open studio. Overall, the team has been great and the work flow has been better than a few other experiences. The only issues I have had on my side were design disagreements with the team, then again in larger teams this would get worse.
I managed to get all the AI to migrate to Area 2, after all the screen have been turned off. The problems I faced where frame rate issues due to the amount of data the AI is processing. Additionally they would run into walls and keep running into them as they slid to the side.
However, when trying to find a way to deactivate the AI; I stumbled across this node:
Which allows me to stop all the logic coming from a Behavioural Tree (An AI thing in ue4: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/AI/BehaviorTrees/QuickStart/).
After that, I used another function that made the AI move to a certain object in game (It’s invisible and at the end of area 1).
Also, I shrunk the navigational mesh from one big one into multiple small ones. So less data would be processed.
Before:
After:
Here are videos of the AI migration to Area 2. When recording the first video i was blasting music on my desktop without realising.
Didn’t intend for this one to have music ;)
Actual Video
A very time consuming job, most of the other shots will be seen in the game. However, these were the harder ones out of the lot. Where i had to manipulate the rig to a certain pose, save it as a static mesh and place it into the scene and check what else needed to be edited. Rinse and repeat the process, until you get the desired outcome.
However, I am happy with the outcome; because of the amount of time that went into it.
I have gotten the guards to spawn and react without dropping the frame rate or performance by a noticeable degree.
But most importantly of all I have finally (Hopefully???), got the area 2 min-game to work. This was a big challenge to find the logic that would work well, took longer than expected and was not an easy task. Now all I have to do is conduct further tests and fix any remaining bugs. The final expression takes into to account 15 different possible scenarios that the player could trigger. There’s also more that I do not want to go into detail with.
Video:
From some of the videos and images you can see and hear that some of it has been integrated into the game.
