Guilt & Joy
An immersive media public art installation.
Role — Projection Designer
Timeline — July-September 2024
Tools — TouchDesigner | Blender | Python
Team — Shreya Deep | Shruti Muralidas
Recreating an experience of complex emotions through visual art
Guilt and Joy explores the emotional struggle of international students who grapple with feelings of guilt: guilt over financial dependence on their families, the pressure to succeed, and take advantage of the opportunities they have that their family never did. This guilt is intertwined with anxiety and self-doubt, as they push themselves to exhaustion yet still feel like they’re falling short. However, amidst the stress and uncertainty, moments of joy and gratitude emerge; through friendships, new experiences, and small achievements, making the journey feel worthwhile.
We wanted to attempt to showcase this dichotomy of extreme emotions through visual art.
The design journey
We chose projection mapping as our medium because it allowed us to create an interactive experience where users could engage with the artwork through fluid body movements. By incorporating motion and responsiveness, we aimed to foster a deeper connection between the audience and the installation, making them active participants rather than passive observers.
We, however, did struggle with where to start and how to translate our abstract ideas into a tangible project. Finding a cohesive visual language that effectively conveyed our theme proved challenging, requiring multiple iterations and refinements, which turned out to be extremely rewarding and proved to be a great learning opportunity.
We chose TouchDesigner as our primary tool to create our projection after grappling with Unity for some time, and used Blender to create our 3D elements.
Using TouchDesigner, we were able to import our 3D elements from Blender and apply the desired effects to transform the plain element into blooming and radiant butterflies. We used an XBox Kinect 2.0 depth camera to capture the skeleton data of the participant, and were able to code a script in Python that allowed the butterflies to track and land on the participants.
Final installation
After much experimentation with several effects and incorporating feedback from participants during a demonstration run, we were able to work with the designated space for our projection mapping, which required some tweaking in our design and challenged our assumptions of scaling. We also curated a playlist to help the participants immerse themselves in these complex feelings of guilt and happiness, and encouraged the participants to give us their feedback and thoughts on the installation.
What resulted was an atmospheric, engaging and emotionally involved art installation that had participants reminiscing, imagining and connecting with thoughts and memories of love, loneliness and nostalgia.
