FUNGI: BEYOND THE EYE
START
Entering our fourth and final year of the program, many courses were centered around project based deliverables. For one class in particular, we were tasked with creating an interactive art installation for Stratford's 2024 LightsOn Festival hosted every year around the holidays. Our constraints were placed, with the festivals theme being "Reimaging", a course imposed theme of "beyond human", a deadline of less than 4 months, and a budget of 140 CAD for each of the 12 teams. Each team consisted of 8 people, split into however many roles we found important. With most parameters set, we were then sent into the wild to develop 2 deliverables before the final presentation, where the last prototype was to be judged by a committee comprised of professors and LightsOn representative. Only 3 out of 12 teams would be chosen to present their final works on the big projectors, and the rest would be allowed to present smaller installations elsewhere if they chose to.
meet the team:
[ i was sick... ]
role
[ lead developer ]
time line
[ september 2024 - december 2024 ]
live art installation
[ theme: reimagine ]
The Idea
Everyone's ideas were presented, critiqued, and then selected to represent groups and their final ideas to work towards. I was assigned to a brilliant concept and idea surrounding Fungi. Our project was geared towards seeing what is beyond the naked eye. Mycelium networks hidden by the naked eye are crucial to the ecosystem, feeding and transferring nutrients around a given area. With our concept in mind, we began to brainstorm ideas, and divvy out roles.
The Task
I was given the role of Lead Developer. With initial meetings for where to take this projects, I was absent due to a cold. After feeling better, I was able to bounce back with enough time to make something. The team came up with an idea of a physical button where once pressed, recorded the time interval data and revealed through an illustrated x-ray view the hidden mycelium networks. To accomplish this, I created a simple prototype to get a working button using breadboarding, and connected it to a lamp fitted with a UV lamp using a relay. Once this button was pressed, it would then light up invisible marker, to mimic our overall idea into a physical demo. This demo would also be our way of receiving initial time data, as the button had also been programmed to track how long it has been pressed for each instance.
Never settle, as change can bring you different places!
re-hashing ideas & challenges faced
After some thought from myself and our team lead, we felt our current installation was not interesting or interactable enough. We relied on interactions that happened before we plan to launch our installation. After some more brainstorming, planned to rework the whole interactive element. When it comes to live interaction, there are not many avenues one could take. Although there are many creative ways one could use as a medium of interaction, all of them came with drawbacks. and with time starting to crunch, we could only choose a reliable and safe option. We opted to create a phone interaction, were the phone acts as a controller, and the projection acted as the main screen. This would solve initial worry for interaction, but created a much bigger deliverable. I pulled up my sleeves.
The controller acted as a player, where the player is a circle that reveals the mycelium network below. The idea was, the more players that joined and "collaborated", the more of the mycelium would be revealed. In testing, getting one instance of a player to work locally was a breeze, but introducing multiple players was quite the challenge. I learned many things about localhost servers, and live servers interacting with one another, navigating about JavaScript and its libraries, the toll 3 all-nighters puts on your body. There were other plans for implementing cool ideas like secrets and stuff, but I ultimately focused on shipping a refined and stress-tested installation.
In the end, we prevailed and were able to get a not finished, but working prototype for testing to show off to the judges. After some deliberation and discussion from the judges, my team was able to secure the win among 3 finalists!
the takeaway
This project taught me a lot about working in a team with many working parts. My part of the story does not even go into detail the amount of effort and work given by the media creation team, the project managers, the marketing and communications, and especially the team leader! Without their support, I would not have been able to refine, test, or push out our final prototype in time. I also was able to learn a lot about myself. How far was I willing to go? How well am I able to teach myself ideas to a base level of understanding? How far am I willing to say I am satisfied with something?
I would say among all of my projects and work, this was among one of my favorites, which is funny because programming and coding is not even my main expertise!
