Alternate Reality

Progress with the assignment is strong, everyone in the group has their designated tasks. I was tasked in the group with all the video editing work which added up to creating CCTV footage, two conclusion videos and an introduction video. Shown below is two of the finished products.

CCTV footage.

Introduction video.

Photo of myself filming for the Conclusion videos.

Alternate Reality

The group came up with the idea of implementing a concept similar to a museum audio tour. The group wanted to give the testers, who would be going on the immersive journey a headset where they will be able to hear the audio we supply them with. By doing this we would be able to take away their sense of hearing and provide them with a totally different reality of sound by controlling this.

We looked in to how we could control what the person experiencing the journey would hear. We came up with the idea of making radio transmitters and broadcasting a signal and they would be able to listen to a certain radio frequency, which we controlled. When looking into radio transmitters I found that FM is more suitable for our needs compared to AM. This is because if we use more than one transmitter the are where the two transmitters overlap is fuzzy. But with FM there is a clean cut between the two transmitters and you can go from one signal to another being perfectly clear.

Once having the idea of immersing the journey taker in our own audio through radio transmitters, we started to build on this by creating a story for it. The idea is very rough at this stage but it follows this storyline at the moment. A dystopian society gaining control of the people through the use of headphones. The government broadcast is of propaganda and such. But some areas of the city are under rebel control and this will be shown by a different radio signal. When you walk into a rebel controlled area you will know with the change of audio which you will be receiving from a different transmitter.

To see if this idea is possible, we brought two FM transmitters and broadcasted a song on a radio station. We had a user listening to a small MP3 radio, when walking from transmitter to transmitter we had the desired effect we wanted, a clean transition between the two transmissions. Now where the group needs to go is building on the story.

Alternate Reality

An important part of this assignment is to create an alternate reality. An alternate reality game is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements, to tell a story that may be affected by participants’ ideas or actions, this is a similar explanation for something which we have to create. When brainstorming what Alternate reality meant, I came up with numerous different ideas.

• Self contained separate reality co existing to ones own.

• Time travel.

• Nihilism.

• Brain in a vat.

• Simulated reality.

• Changing of perception.

• Solipsism.

• Dream argument.

The group recognized that numerous movies had themes such as these embedded in them. A few examples of which we though of were, The Matrix, Inception, Shutter Island, Donnie Darko, Mulholland Drive, Identity. A popular game which also demonstrates this idea strongly is the Assassins Creed series.

Ryan mentioned the movie, Equilibrium. He suggested we watch the movie as it has a similar story line which we are interested in pursuing. The movie is set in a Fascist future where all forms of feeling are illegal, a man in charge of enforcing the law rises to overthrow the system. The movie had was a good break from the work and discussion which we had been doing, it was also a good place to draw inspiration from.

A few things which my group has discussed which they may like to include in the story-

• Rules, when creating a new reality we feel it is important to include a series of rules. When thinking about what communities and realities have rules at the moment we thought about how a totally different reality to ours, the animal kingdom implies a different set of rules.

• Right/Wrong, as demonstrated in numerous alternate reality experiences, the game/journey gives the user the opportunity to make their own decisions. This is something we though could be interesting to apply in our reality and maybe implement a karma system of sorts.

• At the end of the journey we want to include a realization for the user, something memorable for them to remember our journey by. We want the person going through the journey to possibly feel an epiphany.

• An important factor in the experience is that target audience which we are aiming at. We have not decided on a target audience yet but we are thinking possibly aiming it as students as it is something which we can relate to and interact with easily as well as let our peers test the experience before it is marked by the tutors.

• A small thing which was brought up was the inclusion of a perk/upgrade system of sort. We would implement it by if you complete a certain task it would give you an advantage in the journey.

Design Project

My intentions when receiving the brief was to make a product which was strongly linked with the theme which I had with my music and a product which was also tangible. For the Aural Terrains project my group worked with live recordings which were not suitable for this assignment in my opinion. Because of this I got Josh Deane’s and Chris Lee’s groups sound recording which they performed live on the night. Their music had a strong theme related to it which was something I was looking for. The theme which they worked with in their assignment was that of equality, particularly gender equality.

When sketching up ideas I had a lot of packaging ideas to hold a CD-ROM but they didn’t link to the theme well. I found that the theme was very narrow and was finding it hard to relate anything to it. However in the end the way which I decided to link the theme in was through balance, symmetry and the visual graphics of the packaging. I got to work and devised a way to implement these principals. I wanted to create a equilateral pyramid of sorts to hold the CD-ROM. However after a generous amount of work this idea subsided when I got to construction due to numerous reasons and I settled for a simpler more traditional CD case. The case itself is simple but the logo which I designed I found to be quite interesting

When researching I came across the Valknut symbol. The symbol has been interpreted in numerous ways but the way which myself and others saw it was equality. With inspiration from this symbol I designed my own. The colors in the symbol, pink representing girl and blue representing boy are an obvious choice and they interlock creating a new equal color of grey, a color representing equality.

Alternate Reality

Roy Davies, an expert in the field of Augmented Reality, came in to speak to us about Augmented Reality for the current project. Previous to this lecture I had very little idea to what Augmented reality, as I figure most of New Zealand does. Overseas though it is an industry which is booming and something which is slowly being introduced in New Zealand. Augmented Reality is “is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.”

Roy cited numerous examples of Augmented Reality projects he had been involved in as well as others which had interested him. He described how Augmented Reality is used to create a multi sensory experience and sound is the key to fulfilling this experience. Roy showed us a series of videos which showcases Augmented Reality well. Shown below are the ones which most interested me.

Augmented Reality by Hitlab

BMW’s Augmented Reality Glasses

Kweekies - mobile augmented reality game

Augmented Reality Magic

I found Roy’s lecture to be interesting as well as inspiring for the work which I have ahead of me and with to explore some of the ideas shown today further as Roy has directed us to numerous resources.

Alternate Reality

To create an immersive alternate reality, it is important to create a deep and meaningful story which the player can engage with. The process of the journey is to send the player on an immersive voyage to tell a story of some sort, hence being important to the group to make a strong narrative. The group has discussed numerous concepts and developed each slightly, shown below are the most promising ideas we came up with.

• A robot from a future time or different universe comes to Earth to give a warning of some sort.

• A storyline where the government rules the city and a group of rebels is trying to free the city.

• Storyline centered around a secret society, similar to that of X-men.

• Follow any fairytale plot and insist on it being real.

• Anti-Government character from alternate universe speaking and user hears person through headphones, immerse the tester in a audio reality.

• Search for a lost city, such as El Dorado

• A secret underground city, similar to that of “The Village”.

• Storyline centered around a secret society, similar to the Illuminati.

As shown above we have had numerous ideas, none I feel though are original or meaningful. I feel the group needs to look further in how to emotionally impact the user and how to make it an original and memorable journey.

Alternate Reality

The last assignment of the year is the creation of an alternate reality ‘journey’. In the journey we must utilize multiple media and traverse multiple realms, for this we are in groups of five people.

The main thing which I think is important when reviewing the question is what is an alternate reality and how to is it possible to create a realistic journey expressing this reality. When going through the journey the group feels it is really important to be totally immersed in the environment. To do this we must create a realistic and a lot of depth in the reality.

“Immersion is the state of consciousness where an immersant’s awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment; often artificial. This mental state is frequently accompanied with spatial excess, intense focus, a distorted sense of time, and effortless action. The term is widely used for describing immersive virtual reality, installation art and video games, but it is not clear if people are using the same word consistently.

The sensation of total immersion in virtual reality (VR) can be described as implied complete presence within an insinuated space of a virtual surrounding where everything within that sphere relates necessarily to the proposed “reality” of that world’s cyberspace and where the immersant is seemingly altogether disconnected from exterior physical space.”

We have been given limitations of what the reality can be created so one of the first things the group did is walk around the area and see our limitations and what we may be able to create.

Shown below are a series of photos of the area, photography by Sam Joe.