We Have No ‘Fete’ But What We Make… Judgement Day: 5th June 2008

The next project has started and it looks to be a very interesting one, with the emphasis on a village fete style environment with many ‘booths’ (or interactive experiences in this case) that will bring the community together to raise money for the proverbial church roof.

Currently the mindmapping (formerly brainstorming) is in progress and ideas are flowing freely. These have been documented on the back of the brief but will be filled out further as the week goes on. Initially ideas were conforming to the norm of the village fete as the brief did not express the areas into which we could explore.

Here is a list of ideas that have been initially individually thought up with that in mind:

Wii Splat The Rat
Gesturing a bat swipe at a projection of the game

Wii Coconut Shy
Gesturing a ball throw at a projection of a coconut shy. As participants can’t take a virtual coconut home if they knowck one down… one will be emailed to them.

Guess the Pixels
People are given the option to guess the number of pixels in a shape on a projection (instead of jelly-beans in a jar).

Wii Tug of War
Participants use a projection mimicking their movements to move a rope

Wii Gladiators
Participants use a projection mimicking their movements to battle each other.

However after an insightful discussion, the type of ‘booth’ veered away from the traditional village fete and more towards lots of interactive experiences that would bring people together in a fete-like environment. Giving the same sense of community and also providing the same ‘pay-per-go’ attributes that would enable the restoration of the proverbial church roof.

Here is a list of ideas that stem from that discussion:

A Visual Shout Box
People make a noise that is then depicted on a projection / wall. The louder the noise the more ‘angry’ the image / animation or the more it does something. There is the possibility for many more shapes to be added by using (for example) the tone of the voice. These can then be printed or emailed to participants as a souvenir of their experience.

A Disobedient Shadow
A camera tracks the movement of a person against a wall (back projected screen) and creates a shadow them. The shadow then appears to disregard it’s own nature and take on personality indipintant from that of it’s host. The shadow could simply stop, or turn around or get angry at the fact it is always copying someone. At this point it is unclear how realistic the shadow would be or how the participant’s existing shadow would be neutralised. This is interesting because if the shadow suddenly started doing it’s own thing, would the host find themselves following their shadow?

Other more general ideas include participants being unaware of what is going on but other people can see the result of their interaction with the ‘booth’ or participants thinking they are involved in a predefined experience but in fact they are reacting to each other and THAT is the experience.

This project has a lot of potential with thing like movement tracking, gestures, unusual input, unusual responses and even expected results but an unexpected way of receiving them.

Based on feedback from Flo on previous projects this post is an attempt to write project related articles in more of a formal, third person style.