ENIGMA

an intermedia interactive installation

OVERVIEW

This work is an interactive physical performance between a member of the audience and a prerecording. It is intended to be a silent conversation happening at different points in time in the same space juxtaposed with each other. The participant will first enter an enclosed space to view a prerecorded message performed in a combination of sign languages and physical movements. He/She will then exit the space and enter another space the view the conversation that has happened between the previous participant and the performer. The staggering effect is to mimic the time-lag in real conversations people experience in the age of muffled face-to-face interactions and delayed online conversations.

CONCEPT

THEME: ambiguous loss in the age of COVID-19, social distancing and travel restrictions.

I hope to address the psychological damage to people’s need for interpersonal connections due to the social restrictions as a result of COVID-19. People seem to be adapting to these changes well with technology. We are even at a point when we can joke about it. On the surface, technology seems to have solved the problem to a large extent, but it fails to address people’s emotional need for face-to-face communication. There are still many people who are affected by the deprivation of free and unrestricted interpersonal communications in ways they may not even realize. The irony is that my project, which discusses the psychological impacts of these new relationships, has to be done with the help of technology.

PROCESS

space design

The preliminary design of the space. The black block on the right represents the enclosed space a participant will first enter before seeing the final projection. This design was later rejected because there is little incentive for people to want to enter the enclosed space.

After seeing the exhibition space, I have decided to change the design. Now every member of the audience needs to go through the enclosed space first before entering the main projection space.

This is a mockup of the space done on C4D.

Building the space was a challenge. I needed a small enclosed viewing space that is not claustrophobic at the same time. I have chosen to use metal scaffoldings with curtains:

The viewing space has three sides of black curtains and one side with a white curtain for projection.

the narrative

When I think about the message I intend to send to the viewers, I think back on the amount of time I spent waiting for my loved ones to be online. Through the story, I wanted to capture the yearning I felt.

The story is presented in the form of physical theatre with movements derived mainly from Chinese and American Sign Languages.

I also wanted this to be a real conversation, which is why I have put myself in the same space as my viewers when they see my message.

tech

Because the main idea is to merge a live stream with a prerecorded video, I have decided to use max/msp. Here are some of the effects of playing with the software.

This is an attempt to merge live stream from the computer’s built-in camera with a prerecorded video.

This is the final look of the merged videos. The one on the left is a prerecorded video, while the one on the right is streamed from my iPhone’s camera. Because of the limited space in the enclosed area, I have decided to use iPhone 12 Pro’s built-in camera for portability. The effect is done with SKETHCR, which gives the video a hand-drawn quality.

This is what it looks like when the video streaming from the audience’s reactions are blended with the prerecorded video.