living room

inspirstion

For this project, I wanted to film something, so I thought about integrating film and theater with Max and Arduino. I am always interested in taking live performance out of its traditional venues and see how that changes people's experience. So, I decided to film something theatrical. Another inspiration for this project is to create magic or a magical sensation. I hope my audience can experience a magical feeling from my artworks. To me, pull a light switch is the beginning of the magic. A pull chain switch seems like an old technology, but what if it can turn on something besides a lamp? 

filmmaking

The picture on the right is my write-up and script I gave to my actor, Molly Siskin. The character is a clown. I used this script as a guideline, and we actually ended up mostly improvisation. After I met with the Molly, she told me that in her clown training, clown did not speak much. While filming, we played with a different prop each take. We also found using music wass very helpful for clown improvisation. 

arduino & max

In the installation, I used Arduino to connect a light sensor to sense lamp being turned on or off. I connected Arduino to Max through a patch called SensorBox, and I used Max to control the video playback. 

prototype

Originally, the design was that clown appeared when light is on. After testing with two audience, it seemed the opposite made more sense, clown appeared when light off. When the light is on, it is a normal living room setting. When the light is off, clown appears.

performance

reflection

After class critique, I felt very encouraged to explore more in interactive performance. One of the audience picked up the teacup expecting the cup would interact (unfortunately not yet). I can make more interactive props for in the future.