Etude #3: “Wekinate Your World”
Kunwoo Kim
1. Bob Ross Therapy
This is a therapeutic "scratch coloring" program, where Wekinator helps determine which landscpae you are coloring. Soundscapes and Bob Ross's quotes change based on which landscape you are on. Nature sounds come alive as you complete the coloring. I trained the landscapes using mouse position. I used synth pad sounds from Garageband and the pitches change based on algorithm and timbres change based on landscape. I cut out Bob Ross's quotes from a youtube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ZQfT5IxXM). The drawing is downloaded and the sketch version was made in powerpoint. This was made using Chunity. Link to Source 2. Schrodinger's ChucK
This is a FaceOSC used software, where ChucK crashes when the user opens their eyes, but plays code when they close their eyes. The user can therefore never really 'see' what's going on haha. Is crashing the truth, or the sound the truth? Link to Source 3. Crashnator
This is a FaceOSC used racing game, where user steers left and right by face position, and accelerates by opening or closing their mouth. It was almost impossible the race. Link to Source Reflection: I wanted to create something therapeutic in terms of interaction, and thought of one of those scratch coloring books. In addition, I have been listening to Bob Ross to go to sleep and learn his astounding wholesome truth of the world, so I wanted to share some of his voices. This time, I tried to minimize the big goal, and as Bob Ross says, "Let it happen". I tried to get inspired by the progress itself more as I played around with Wekinator and the basic coloring interaction I created. I think the synth pads can be a little bit more different from one another based on landscapes and potentially a "scratching" sound would be more satisfying. I think improvisation is a really important quality when implementing AI into design as 1) you never really know what comes out of it in the end, and 2) you find advantages and limitations that was previously unknown as you work through the design. Wekinator was really fun to work with! There are happy moments when I don't have to math out the mapping, but let Wekinator take care of it instead. Leaving some ambiguity of the boundaries intentionally to retain a spectrum from point A to point B was also quite pleasing. Wekinator was very responsive to my overall intention (and even in moments when it was not, all I had to do was train some more data until I was satisfied! Really cool!). I wish to create a software like this myself, where professionals *and* nonprofessionals both could make such wonderful use out of and fulfill their creative needs! Rebecca is definitely one of my role models! I also want to create an interaction of playing a game with my piano inputs (like high arppeggio is a jump, major chord is right, minor chord is left, something like that), but I could not figure out how to actually create keyboard strokes with OSC. I really want to know how to do it! Acknowledgments: Thanks to Ge, Yikai for creating this etude + codes. Thanks to Andrew for creating a Chunity version of Chuckinator. Thanks to Bob Ross. Thanks to Rebecca Fiebrink.