To tie up the projects, we had a mini presentation/experience at LCCS. The middle schoolers were very excited to talk about their projects and play the role of being the teacher. They explained the concept of the project and lead discussions on what can be done with younger students.
It was really cold and windy. While building the dome, we were constantly fighting with the wind to keep it from blowing away. 8 weights were used to hold it down and the door kept flapping away. Due to the nature of projections needing darkness, we had to add a drape to the top and assign one person to keep the door in place. Many of the small things that we were debating about prior to the event became insignificant.
Aside from that, the process was really fun and we had a pretty good participant turn out. It was interesting to see how individuals responded to the content in the two worlds and their reaction when they discovered the difference. for the younger kids, many at first said that they preferred the red polluted world because it was more vibrant but once they discovered the content, they changed their minds about it. It was also surprising to see how supportive of recycling and reducing plastic the parents are.
Overall, it was a very memorable event.
this week, we visited LCCS for the last time before Earth Day. Having seen the projections, the middle schoolers have a much better understanding of the concept and were very excited to improve it for Earth Day. While there, we finalized the storyline and recorded the narration of Ella as Jimmy John the turtle. Charlotte and Laila also created many beautiful drawings for the dome. It was a very productive session and we will be working on adding the assets and finalizing the project.
Today was Playtech and we were able to put the dome projection to test. We learned that we had to make changes to the composition/scale of the animation and the positioning of the projector and reflector. Some work is still needed to make the bottles only visible in one world because having it in both worlds made it hard to understand the concept of blue world is clean and red world is polluted. The colors also needed to be calibrated because the blue world wasn’t as vibrant as we wanted it to be. We also realized that we would need speakers to make it more atmospherical.
Regarding audience response, everyone had fun covering each eye and observing the underwater scene so we hope to have more content to show for Earth Day. The difficult part was for them to understand that one side was polluted and the other wasn’t so we need to work on making the difference more visible. We found it useful to talk to the participants and explain the background of being in Hudson River and that the red world is how polluted rivers/oceans look like. We would need to work on building the background into the experience. Maybe we can include the Hudson River in the title or have it become part of the narration. We also suggested to the students at LCCS that we might need a call to action in the experience.
Overall, it was very fun and we got a lot of positive feedbacks.
This week is Playtech and we spent class testing the projection inside the dome and combining aesthetics of student drawn work and unity. I will be animating the drawing and creating the underworld for Fuad to apply to skybox and project onto the dome. We finally saw the dome this week and to be honest, it was smaller than what I had expected. It was very hot during class and being inside the dome added to the humidity. We hope it will be cooler when we present on Earth Day.
Visiting LCCS was very productive this week. This was the first time our full dome group met and when we showed them our ideas of having two worlds, they were really excited about it. They felt that their original scrip were going to become irrelevant but we explained that their script could be slightly altered to become the intro of our experience. The students split into the scripting/narrating team and the artist team. We were lucky to have a few great artists to create the assets. For the coming weeks, we will be combining the assets and putting them into an underwater environment. The Parsons students also split into teams for physical building, editing the drawings, and building the underwater environment. I look forward to seeing the results.
Since Ocean Odyssey also plans to utilize the dome, our teams tried to create a connection between the projects this week. At the beginning of class, we had a zoom meeting with the members of Ocean Odyssey from LCCS to discuss the details and goals. The ideas went from a VR game about collecting trash with controllers to a more visual based experience. However, by the end of the meeting, so many ideas were discussed that we were more lost than earlier. Anezka’s written diagram helped us clarify our goals and mediums which lead to an idea of combining the two colored world and x-ray vision to show a plastic free ocean, a plastic filled ocean, and the inside of plastic filled fishes. We also decided on narrowing the background to being the Hudson River which lead to a more robust set of marine animals and plants to use for assets. I look forward to finalizing the project and seeing the new assets we will be getting next week.
This week was very productive and busy. After arriving at LCCS, we storyboarded and ideated with each other. Because we ran out of time near the end of class, we chose were able to choose the four main projects and formed rough groups but the details still need to be figured out. In addition to the four projects, Olivia and I will also be forming an additional group creating an underwater game inside the dome utilizing colors and colored lenses. We will be needing the students from LCCS to create the visuals and if possible, we wish to incorporate information from the other games to give our project more depth. We have a good idea of how it would look like but the technical details still needs to be figured out. We look forward to working on this project.
This week, we were not able to visit LICC due to the snow day. Instead, we had a zoom meeting online with the Parsons class and discussed our ideas so far. There were ideas for treasure hunts, role plays and more. Listening to other’s idea, I was inspired with an idea of a game using the characters from on of the middle schooler’s hero’s journey. The story was of three characters who were living in a dump and talking about their views on trash. One said that he liked it while the other said he didn’t. The third one told them they have to work for their desired future. So for my idea, I want to create a dome filled with wastes, especially plastics to represent the feeling of living in water filled with trash. Participants will be met the three characters and choose the character they agree with. The corresponding button would add/subtract the numbers of waste on the screen of the dome which will have a record of the fluctuation in waste. At the end of the day, we will be able to compare the number of waste throughout the day. I look forward to proposing my idea to the middle schoolers.
This week, we tested a few tools for virtual classrooms; Rumii and Owl. Although Owl was very cool in that it has so many cameras and is able to record 360 degrees and nature sound, we ran into some technical difficulties. It took some time to connect to LCCS in New Jersey and due to the way their classroom was structured, there were many conflicting voices that made it difficult to understand the speaker. Some of the middle schoolers at LCCS did not get a full understanding of a hero’s journey and therefore did not create relevant stories. However, there were some interesting stories that we could develop from. One thing I would like is to be able to make it comfortable for the shy kids to share their ideas. In New York, we formed groups and also created storyboards. My partner and I created a hero’s journey for a fish who made friends with a pearl/oyster that is able to destroy all the plastic in the ocean and goes on mission to restore the ocean. It was a fun process and I hope it will inspire projects for the Earth Day event. Rumii was fun to explore and I look forward to more characters and objects to interact with.