Introducing Halcyon

Halcyon is an immersive installation that allows users to translate their brainwave activity into visual art with the help of Muse headset. This project aims to provide entertainment purposes for the curious mind and research a less explored territory that is brainwave art in digital media. Wearing the Muse headset across the head, it transfers the brainwave to an application called Mind Monitor, which then sends the data to another software called TouchDesigner to project the visuals in real-time.

Halcyon, as a brand, is very fluid and abstract, since it produces artwork that is different for everyone. To emulate this goal, the references for this project need to be represented as such as well. Furthermore, as Halcyon is a simple project, I think that mere typography would be sufficient to deliver the aim of the brand.

A logo is the keystone of a brand, and it has the power to represent the values a brand upholds. Before proceeding to design a logo, there are some essential rules that are needed to keep in mind. One of the first things to consider is creating the logo in black and white first, as this will allow the logo to be flexible and used in different media. Another thing is to strive for minimalism. Use a minimal color palette and select shapes, icons, font styles, and symbols that do not make the visual message too confusing to comprehend. Understand that less is more. The more elements added to the logo, the more complicated it becomes.

When creating the poster for Halcyon, the author keeps in mind on delivering a modern and straightforward feeling. The reason for such a decision is to preserve the modernism of the project and not bore people in the long run. The curved lines on the second row of the example are drawn in a free-handedly method to represent a fluid, comfortable, safe, familiar, and relaxing feeling.

After doing some trial and error, the author selected these posters to represent Halcyon. One of the reasons the author chose the four options is to show the flexibility of the brand. The lines represent the brainwave data used as part of the project, and the bright colors represent Halcyon's definition.

Comments

TouchDesigner Experiment: Audio Reactive Particle Cloud

My second experiment with TouchDesigner is creating this audio-reactive particle visual by following Bileam Tschepe 's tutorial on Youtube. Again, I just followed his tutorial step by step. This tutorial is a little different because it uses both audio and visuals. The visual follows the music in real-time. Other than audio, we are also introduced with the element 'Math' to add the channels of the audio together. This is the end product. Music is FriendsV2 by Muskatt.

TouchDesigner Experiment: Inserting OSC data with OSCIn

From one of my last experiment , I tried to change the data input. Instead of using audio, I replaced it with OSC data from my Muse headset. To connect your OSC device to TouchDesigner, make sure that the IP address and port number is the same so the data transfer can be accurate. In this case, I use a third-party app called Mind Monitor (available on iOS devices) to connect my Muse headset to the TouchDesigner software. Below are screenshots and videos from my experiment. You can see that the brainwave data is already recorded in real-time in the software. Then I used the alpha, beta, and theta brainwave to change the movement of the visuals (the chosen brainwave data I used are just placeholders for now to see the movement). Then the data is connected with 'noise', which is like the fluid/abstract visuals you see on the background. I also set the colors to be moving/changing over time.

Designing the final project's visual in TouchDesigner

When creating the visuals for my final project, I was inspired by a 'Spectrum to TOPs' tutorial created by Bileam Tschepe on Youtube (I did a post about it here ). The tutorial teaches the audiences explicitly to convert an audio spectrum directly to TOPs using the CHOP to TOP and compositing. Since Bileam Tschepe used audio as the source information for the visuals, I changed the former portion of the tutorial from audio data into OSC data (blog post here ). Since OSC and Audio data are in the CHOP section, and to create visuals are in the TOP section, a 'CHOP to TOP' node is required. Initially, the node is represented by one pixel high and in black and white; to adjust it, simply change the data format if necessary (for the color), and adding a composite node changes the pixel size. A Noise node is added because it is responsible for the output resolution of the project. The Noise node is also where the author attaches the OSC data in the transform section. This all...

˗ˏˋ ChristineDinata ˎˊ˗

Search This Blog