Constellate

Proposal

Memory Lanterns ritualizes the personal release of a digital memory without erasing the memory from existence. The process of actually letting go takes place in a virtual reality world, where users can take a digital media element they wish to forget (photos, videos, text posts), attach them to a sky lantern and let them float into the sky, imitating an open disposal process. This virtual world is a globally shared environment, so any user entering the space can look up and see lanterns released from users all over the world. This VR experience is augmented outside with a personally-owned tabletop lantern. Points of light are emitted in all directions into the surrounding environment, representing a lantern that has been let go by somebody, somewhere in the world. The device also indicates newly released memories in real time through visual and auditory cues. The purpose of this project is to give people a way to reflect and release their digital memories into an ether from which they will never be able to retrieve them. By visualizing all released memories, both in the VR environment and with the device, we hope to create a sense of community and not being alone in one’s hardships.

Prototype

Describe your experience/working prototype: What did you create, how, etc.? What tools and technologies were involved? Include appropriate content and illustration (e.g. a concept video, a video of the device in operation, diagrams, code, etc.)

Our experience takes place in a private but shared space through the virtual reality environment and involves the creation of three separate components that will come together to work as a whole. Using Unity to create the digital, ritual space, a scene was built that situates users in a beautiful, isolated location. Users are able to pull in digital memories, such as photographs, that are perhaps meaningful, but cause them pain or stress or hold them back from moving on with their lives. With gesture control, users can pick up their digital memory, interacting with the digital memory in a pseudo-tangible way to look at and react to once more. Attaching the digital memory to a waiting sky lantern, the user can raise their hands and release the memory from their lives. Looking into the sky, the user can see all other lanterns that have been released into the sky, by any other user who has ever entered this VR environment. This helps the user feel like they are part of a collective human experience while they are vulnerable and revisiting an unhappy memory, turning a potentially isolating, lonely experience into a warmer, unifying experience.

This experience is supported with a tangible object, a lantern representing the experiences inside the digital world. When a user, anywhere in the world, releases a memory in the VR environment, the lantern’s Particle base will light up and chime. Lights will then project from the top of the lantern, mimicking the sky within the VR environment. For anybody in the vicinity of the lantern, this physical embodiment of the digital release will build empathy for the general relationship and personal struggles of humans. If they are themselves struggling with moving on, it will further serve as a subtle form of encouragement.

For the lantern itself, we had some rough sketches from our first ideation meeting, precedents from children’s night light toys, and constraints based on the technology we needed to include. The Hue lightbulb we planned to use and the Particle board with LED string dictated the dimensions necessary for our object. With the dimensions set, it was just a matter of working within those constraints to come up with a shape that would be reminiscent of a sky lantern, allowing ritual experiencers to make a direct connection between the VR experience and the tangible object. We created the pattern with Illustrator, figured out allowances based on the width of our acrylic material (1/8 inch), adjusted the pattern appropriately and cut all pieces out with a laser cutter, assembling them with a fast-acting plastic glue.

The Particle board within the base section of the lantern controls a speaker and a string of LEDs wired in parallel. Its main function is controlled via the Particle API and is remotely called by the VR program every time a lantern is released. Once this call happens, the Particle plays a bell chime sound with the speaker and smoothly turns the LEDs on and off over the course of several seconds. To connect this action with the VR experience, we mirrored the chime sound within the virtual world.

The 3D lantern model is built in Maya, and it references the art style of Chinese Sky Lantern, and add a small basket beneath to hold the photos and provide clear affordances to let users know where to place the photos. A small candle is placed right above the basket to tell users where to light up the lantern. 

Preview of the model can be found here: https://skfb.ly/6I6QI

Process

Describe how you arrived out the outcome. What iterations, refinements, design decisions and changes were made?

In creating a ritual, we knew our idea needed to be an experience users would appreciate coming back to again and again, even if they only actually needed to use the object once in a blue moon. Further, we were cognizant that the process of letting go of a digital memory, under any circumstance, is unlikely to be a totally happy one. We wanted to create an experience that was cathartic while also respecting the solemnity of the actual action taking place. The germination of this idea was to digitize the release of memories into the wind, an open disposal process. We did not want to destroy memories in a quick acting, immediate process. We wanted to empower users to seek personal growth and absolution themselves with a gentle, healing method of letting go.

If our object was going to reasonably exist in the world, it had to be attractive, so we used clear acrylic and laser cutting and the inspiration of Chinese sky lanterns. We coated the insides of the object with black construction paper to help direct light upwards. The original plan was to have a top piece coated with holes that would direct light up. We experimented with a number of hole types, but none of them allowed enough light to penetrate far enough to create the spray of light points we had been hoping for. We swapped our hue lightbulb for a higher intensity flood lamp and were finally able to get some results. Although light was now projecting onto surfaces in dark rooms, the results were fuzzy and shadowy and required deep darkness for a short distance effect. (The flood lamp also runs so hot it started to melt the paper coating the inside of our lantern.) Finally, we switched to a miniature projector, which allowed us the most control over the projection visuals—a sky full of lights. While the miniature projector is small enough to fit inside our lantern, the top doesn’t rest flat. Ultimately, we’ve decided to hold the projector outside of the lantern so we can control precisely where the projector is projecting. While not ideal, this best conveys the idea—which is fine for our prototype stage.

We faced a couple of issues with the particle board. First, the speaker is not as loud as we hoped it would be and is even more difficult to hear when enclosed within the acrylic case. The second issue was that we were limited to six LEDs that could not evenly light up the perimeter of the bottom section. However, this was likely an artifact of us not wanting to require an external power supply to drive an array of LEDs. The reason we wanted to avoid an external supply was to limit the number of cables entering the device to two - Particle power & Hue power. One benefit to this approach is that the device has a simpler aesthetic.

For the VR prototyping, we mainly used the Unity as the tool to develop our VR experience, and we want to make the interaction intuitive and seamless. Therefore we decided to use Leap Motion as the input system, which can provide a very natural gesture interface for our VR interactions, and the gesture interface simulates the real world affordances, such as picking up the photos, grabing the torch and placing the photos inside the lantern. In order to make it more user friendly to novice user, we also provide some visual cues when users' hand gets closer to the interactive objects. In addition, a few sound effects are also used to enhance the experience, and make it reactive and responsive.

In order to connect the VR experience to the physical device (particle), we used the Unity Web Request function to send a form to the unique particle device with a special access token, then use the Particle.function to listen to this request. As such, when the lantern is lighted up by the fire, the LEDs on the physical device will simultaneously light up. When this connection happens, it can also let the other people outside the VR headset know that someone releases a new memory into the world.

We choose to use a beautiful night skybox to give users a sense of calm, silence, and safety, because we believe these elements are essential when users want to confront with their personal memories and emotional. Some ambient sound of night is also added to amplify the feelings, and many existing floating lanterns in the sky make users feel they are not alone, so that we get the sense of being supported and can be more brave to let go of their painful memories. 

The final project is exported as an executable file (.exe) which can run on Windows system. In order to run this program, a windows system that is compatible with Oculus Rift and Leap Motion is required, and with all the required devices, and software, the program should run properly. The project executable file can be found here:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JH0ZFeg42iLAoAVfZLxKQFtomgeII-IQ?usp=sharing

Precedents

Describe theory, concepts, and research you have performed. Describe the prior work, ideas and projects that influenced your design. What work informed this idea.

works and frameworks of disposal from class

Materialization of Memory

In this case study, I am looking into Refik Anadol’s project “Melting Memories”, and this project explores human memories from both an artistic and technology perspectives. Even though strictly speaking, the project is not about helping people forget their past, and it’s more about materializing one’s brain activities (so-called memories) into a dynamic morphing forms. When watching this beautiful piece of art installation, I still strongly feel that see our own memory melting and shape shifting is a very poetic approach for forgetting. This small case study lets us to think more about the significant role of materialization in terms of letting go a piece of memory.  It prompts us to think why a form is important as we appreciate our memory.

Even though the above mentioned project does not take a metaphor approach to materialize one's memory, but it sill inspired us to go that approach. We realize that ritual plays a very special part in this experience, therefore how to create a ritual without limiting ourselves with a physical form becomes the key to success. Then we all believe virtual reality, which allows us to go beyond reality but also have a believable quality, can solve this problem.

http://refikanadol.com/works/melting-memories/

leapmotion and VR

Many gesture controls and hand interactions have been researched and designed by Leap Motion, and Cat Explorer example is particular inspiring in term of creating intuitive gesture controls and interfaces. This example demonstrate several good practices of hand interaction in VR, that are partly implemented into our prototype.

https://gallery.leapmotion.com/cat-explorer/

Open Questions and Challenges

Reflect on the process of making What questions remain to be addressed or questions about memory did this exploration raise for you. What are the things we should pay attention to/discuss in class for future explorations? project. What did you learn? What would you do differently?

When we originally came up with the idea for this project, we imagined the lantern as a personal object that would be in somebody’s home. After class feedback, we started to rethink. How often would somebody use a memory lantern experience like this? What is the utility of the lantern lighting up whenever a memory is released if almost nobody ever gets to see it. We’re now imagining the lantern being situated in public spaces. The specifics of what kind of space are still up in the air. If in a therapists’ office, will users feel pressured by the space to move on before they are ready? If it is in a public setting, will users want to conduct such a personal, vulnerable action where anybody could walk by and watch them? If we create an enclosed environment, does the meaningfulness of the shared experience of moving forward with life and communality of the human experience disappear?

There’s also the idea of regret. The way we’ve conceived of this experience, once a memory is gone, released into the digital sky, it’s irretrievable. Even if releasing a memory is cathartic at the moment, what happens months or later when the user decides they are more comfortable with revisiting the memory and wish they had that piece of their past? Of course, this kind of regret happens in the tangible world too, when people let go of memory-triggering things. In a digital space, where the presumption is that “nothing is ever truly deleted,” how do we create a space where people can understand and handle the permanence of letting go?

Reflection

Reflect on making this project. What did you learn? What would you do differently? Did you get where you wanted to? If not, why not? What do you need to get there, etc?

Of course our project is not perfect, but we feel that we achieved a version of our vision that enabled us to create a compelling story and conversation around the world we created.

We received very useful feedback from the zip-crit session in class. One of the most thought-provoking pieces of feedback was the idea that all of our memories were treated as similar objects with equal importance. We now notice that memories are all unique and therefore carry varied weights within a person. In future revisions we would likely be successful in capturing this in some way. One possibility is to have the speed of a lantern's ascension inversely related to how long a person spent reminiscing over a memory before placing it in the lantern. This would essentially mean that if someone were to spend a long time reflecting on a memory before ultimately letting it go, then the lantern would ascend into the sky very slowly. This effect could then be mirrored by the duration of the light effect on all of the Particle devices to allow a deeper level of empathy from others.

Another consideration for future revisions is to think more about how memories may be able to be taken back, or if they should be permanently inaccessible. If we did decide to allow memories to be taken back, then we imagine that the process would have to require some effort beyond just clicking a button. This would give the act of retrieval more meaning and hopefully cause the user to consider the potential consequences of opening old wounds.

Attribution and References

Reference any sources or materials used in the documentation or composition.

Here are all the audio files that are used in the VR prototype.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1N6XLtc8ehqC-n_VcRw6Z_77rvFhjBFOb?usp=sharing

The Skybox Material is downloaded from here: http://www.custommapmakers.org/skyboxes.php

The Leap Motion Hand model and SDK uses the Leap Motion Unity Core Asset https://developer.leapmotion.com/unity#5436356