Prototype

I am making an interactive installation to present the ideal mode of human connection and social interaction by taking doors as a metaphor of access from one's mind to another's.
By its participants closing and opening doors, I would like to signify that doors of minds must be open for a person to have connection with another. And by switching the perspective, I want to indicate the importance of seeing from other’s point of view.

An ideal human connection is constructed by two open minds that can understand each other, which is hard to get and maintain in reality. It is why I would like to create a piece demonstrating daily human connection with ideal interaction to make people think and to analyze how they react to it.

Main concept:

• Doors = access to one's mind

• True human connection = mental connection

• The ideal mental connection = two (minds)doors open at the same time. (Self-enclosure + social exchange theory)
  

" The more you want to know another, the more you have to show and share with."

• The ideal social interaction needs people have more understanding of each other.

Video mode switches to real-time video = subjective becomes objective = seeing how others see you.


Fallowing sketch is the plan for the door located on 10th floor.





Potentiomater + Openframework from Hsiang Ju Hung on Vimeo.



Small Model of my installation from Hsiang Ju Hung on Vimeo.

Next :

1. To modify the code to make doors' angle match each other
2. To make preset video switch to real-time video from camera randomly.
3. Shoot more footages.
   

Question:
1. How to make users know this is about human connection ?
2. What kind of content will make the theme more obvious?
3. What can users take away from my piece? ( memory of experiencing it??)
4. How can I make this into a piece that users can interact with real users(skype?? is is too complex??)?

Concept+Scenario updated

Concept/
I am making an interactive installation about human connection through doors opening and closing.

A video of different people opening and closing a door would play simultaneously to user's opening and closing a physical door at the end of a fake doorway behind it. Every time a user open the door, he/she will meet a person acting simultaneously in front of him/her. The more he opens the door, the more he/she can see the other. As human daily interaction, the more people want to know others, the more they have to show and share with. I try to connect people and make people think about interpersonal relationship through this simple and common behavior.

Scenario/
Jude is a cdt student walking on the way to the lab on 10th floor as usual. When he passes by the door at the end of a hall way, he hears knocking sounds from it and gets surprised. He turns back to the door and finds there is a door viewer on it. He looks around but dose not see anyone around. Then the door knocks again. So he peeks into the door viewer to see what is making the noise. Unexpectedly, there is a woman looking at him very closely, which makes him shocked. Although it is a little creepy to him, he believes that it must be someone playing tricks and testing sensors behind the door.


Then he tries to open the door to see what's behind it. However, when he opens the door, he sees a hall way leading to another projected door which is opening by the woman. He looks at her looking at him. She waves toward him and keeps looking at his way. Jude feels so strange to have a stranger looking at each other for a while although she is not a real person. But he still waves back to see if something will happen like other motion detecting pieces. But the woman is just looking at him. Then he finds that when he moves the door, the woman also moves hers. He closes the door and peeks through the crack. The woman also peeks over there simutaneously. Therefore, he decides to close the door and open again. However, there is another stranger instead of the woman opening the door with him. And surprisingly, when he closes and opens again, he sees himself.

Jude feels it interesting to share with his classmate, Claire. So he asks her to come to see. They close it again and play with it together. Sometimes they see themselves opening the door at the end of the hallway; sometimes they see some strangers. Some strangers open the door very happy, and some are shy. It is a naked man always hiding his body behind the door even it is open. It is a group of kids standing and laughing right after the door when it is open by one of them. And it may also be a girl crying.




Installation structure:


I'll use a potentiometer attached to door joint to input analog to Arduino board connected to a computer. The angle of door would control video frame playing on a straight screen built into a trapezoid constructure behind the door. There will be a modified door viewer box attached to the door. It has half transparent mirror let it either see a small screen playing video or see through fish eye lens.

scenario

Concept/
Door Between Us is an interactive installation about human connection through poetics of doors opening and closing.

User/ Gallery viewers








Video content/


Possible form/


Next step/
Shoot video.
control frame by analog input.

I would like to build physical sculptures of human connection for next semester.

precedent/

Invisible doors idea

Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965

Door is an ubiquitous interface that I am interested in for its embedded abundant human collective memory and universal usability.

Developed from a daily object, a physical door has become an interactive connector leading to an imaginary world, a tele-interface between distant places, and also an illusion generator changing space and place.

Being far away form the place where I have been for 24 years, and feeling various mental and cultural interpersonal distance, I found there are more invisible doors between people. To take a door as an metaphor for separation and access from a person to another, I would like to make an interactive sculpture about human connection through poetics of doors opening and closing.

Plan/

The user can control the video frame by opening and closing the door. While it is open, two hands connected. While it is close, two hands become separated which representing a relationship is over. There will be several movie clip showing interpersonal relationship connecting and disconnecting.

Material/

video, door viewer, screen

In the future, I would like to make the video into a real movable gesture sculpture.

Here's the first try of controlling digital door by a physical one.

Physical and Digital Door from Hsiang Ju Hung on Vimeo.

Space illusion idea

Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, aurelia's oratorio, 2008
Right pic/ The performer creates an illusion that her limbs can move from drawers to drawers at ease. It looks like her body is deconstructed and moving remotely.
Left pic/ There is a train driving theough the performer's body.
In this show, I admired the way performers use the space and how all objects move to create illusions. There is a period of time when all things are living upside down. And sometimes the inside of the stage becomes outside of it because things move out from the right move in from the left at the same time. Very impressive.

Jan Svankmajer, Darkness Light Darkness


I see different ways of receiving information from a door and a lot of imagination behind it in this piece.

Inside Outside
Being inspired by many movies and performances. I am interested in how vision can change one's perspective and perception of a space. I would like to create a door that generate illusion of the inside is the outside to question where the user is.


Plan/
When a user passes the door, it would release knocking sound. When he tries to look into the door viwer, he would see himself inside the room.
Material/
Half-transparent glass, door viewer, screen, software



test with card board and mac laptop
result/
It looks like facing a mirror with a little time lag.
It needs to be added after effect of fish-eye looking view on the screen.

Tele-interface idea updated

Developed from previous idea of building a tele-door for distance users. It is sunset and sunrise that the environment changes the most everyday at the same time in both New York and Taipei. While the sun is going down, it is going up at the other side. I decided to make a door in New York leading to Taipei at this specific moment.
Sunrise Sunset
Plan/
Bring Taipei's sunrise to New York's sunset through a door viewer.
"This is how sun is going at the other side of the earth."

Material/
video, screen, door viewer.

After Midterm

I found that there are problems in my current proposal.
So I tried to reply to Loretta's critics which make them pretty clear as fallowing.

• Concept of distance? You are not grappling with this concept. (CR)

Yes, I realized right after the presentation.
I have a strong-motivated concept of interpersonal distance which has not addressed clearly in my prototypes. And I believe that it is a deep topic that hard to describe through an simple interaction. At the same time, I developed a format of making an interactive door to create a surprise moment and temporary illusion, which has not had solid enough concept yet. But it is effective and with a lot of possibilities. I am interested in both of them. But they are going totally two separate ideas now. I am wondering if it is too forceful to combine them, which direction should I choose for thesis?

• Disconnect: not an experience that brings people together

Yes, I agree. So I attempted other formats to achieve what I wanna explore about cutting down mental distance. I started to compare how much time I spend on people around me to find a proper distance among my relationship. Also ask friends about what close means to them, ask them to think and draw a close one with eyes close, and ask who are close to them and who they stay with the most daily. A few tests gave them some thinking process of what the relationship between physical distance and mental distance is. Should it be direct ratio? Both physically too close and far might cause mental distance. Then what is the most balanced distance? Some of my friend suggests me to do it in narrative, using my own story and expression to build the mental interaction. I already had a plan of making a experimental video about this concept for a while but still have no time to push it forward because I am not confident with the format and content.

• Door itself – simplicity of – powerful – has potential as study (ST)

I studied door in my first semester, which was interesting. But I am not sure about if there is enough motivation for me to keep discovering about this. Why is door important to me? The only thing connecting to myself is that I use it everyday and I always want to have an anywhere door. A door that can take me to anywhere I want. Let me meet with someone immediately regardless the cost and time of transportation. A magic door that can give me surprise all the time. I miss traveling a lot. Travel is the thing always brings surprise to me because scenes, people, and moods change from place to place. So maybe I can create an unexpected journey through a door. A journey of others' life? A journey in New York? A journey around the world? A journey through all doors in movies?

• Make doors – many, many doors as experimental exploration: ‘what doors do; how people respond; meaning inherent in “doorness.”

What I am interested in door is that it has a lot of collective memory and it is everywhere, a universal language. it is about space and place, security and privacy, and curiosity and imagination.

Tree Map

I questioned myself a lot during every step, so I could not finish anything practically. Today in writing class, I tried to map out my project and find out where I am in this diagram. As a result, it looks like a huge domain in the content, which is good as well as bad. The good thing is that I have abundant materials to address my concept. But the bad thing is obviously that I am engaged in many issues. Since I have to drill down for three-week-long process, I need to make a choice from them.
So, I picked physical interface on the form side. And for the first experiment- a door letting remote people communicate in real time, I think I was trying to make "On-line meeting" into physical world. It means that I attempted to make real-time meeting happens regardless space distance in physical world as easily as it does in virtual one.
For the second experiment- a door letting remote people communicate by passing a note to each other, I am going to recreate a usual communication way happens regardless space distance in physical world as easily as it does in the Internet.
The difference between the first and the second is that users can communicate with each other through touchable interface-paper weather the partner is in front of the door or not in the later . But in the first, although users have to be both on site to communicate, they don't have any time difference in this case.

Back to Anywhere Door

For the difficulties of defining a way to measure interpersonal mental distance by physical objects, I decided to make my experiment go for the simple idea of Anywhere Door for now. I found that Internet has already done what I kind of want to do- change the sense of distance. Within on-line world, people can feel close with remote partners, see far away through great distance and time, and expend their power of effects easily. The most easy way to maintain long-distance relationship has become online meeting. In some degree, Internet has changed every computer or smart device with access to the web into an anywhere door. People use it to go through many places virtually, and to connect with others everyday in big cities. (My roommate is playing guitar with her boyfriend who is in Taiwan through Skype now. How miracle it is that two people can interact with each other regardless time and space)
So, to make a good use of the magic of Internet, I added some possibility into my experiment.

1. People can see random places around the world in real-time through a hole and they also can rotate the door nob/knock to switch scene behind the door connecting with world wide surveillance cameras.
2. Using Skype activated on two different locations, two remote doors make people living far apart communicate with each other as neighbors.
3. By drawing a rectangle on a wall, people can open a virtual door leading to a place on the earth.