Think about what I learn about the creative process, the most important thing I improved is my creativity. To find out some inspiration, tutor asked us to the MoMA to see someone else’s production. My inspiration of major project is on the basis of the “shadow monsters” that I saw in the MoMA. Also, listening to others’ advice is also a very important step during my creative process. In my major project, I used only wave to express the sound at first. But Carrie told me that it was a little bit boring by using only wave. She said that I can change the line of the X-axis and Y-axis to make the shape of the line much more interesting. Moreover, the inspiration happens randomly, it’s very important to record them. For the study 4 and study 5, the inspiration is from a video on the Tiktok. We want to focus on the face recognition technology in our study 4 and 5. I am very happy to learn how to use facial recognition technology with the help of our tutor. In addition, I learned to watch some tutorials on YouTube to learn some of the application of elements to make our work better.

Because this study requires us to do non-tactile interactions. We think a lot of ideas. Finally, we decided to use face recognition technology. Through the study of four and five, I know how to interact with people without tactile. In the trip of ACMI and MoMA, I found non-tactile interactions also can give people a feeling of happy and interesting. The “shadow monsters” is using the technique of projection and recognition, fusing the technology and fun to express the interesting and happy feeling for users. Perhaps this non-tactile interactive art looks simple, but it can bring fun to the user. So simplicity does not affect the experience of the work for users. There is another work that impressed me. It is a building model that makes a sound. When you approach the model, you will hear the sound of ‘Help me’. This will cause the curiosity of every passagers, for example, who made the sound, where it sounded. Perhaps this is the charm of non-tactile interactive art works. So far, I have explored a lot of new technologies in Max (face recognition technology, through the variables to control the sound and use the volume of the sound to control the changes in the line). Through these research, I found that the simpler, the easier it is for users to engage in our work.

So far within the Max, my ability to apply its technology is constantly improving. I can not use MAX well at first. I need my teacher to guide me through every operation. This situation is getting better now. In this process of progress, the teacher’s help is indispensable, at the same time, the tutorial on youtube is also very useful. In general, I am proud of my efforts. In the creative part, I think my success is not to rely on tactile interactions, but to start using non-tactile interactions, using facial recognition technology, voice tools and other tools to make our work into a new interaction artistic area. Something that was helpful during the development with these new and more complicated functions was the ability to work in smalls groups and feed off each other’s knowledge and skill levels. Every member of our group has its own strengths, and we are happy that we can help each other so that our work can be better. I think my personal project is very interesting because I know that many people in my class use face recognition technology. I want to do something different from others, so I chose the sound to control it in the end instead of face recognition technology.

Finally, I think I still have a lot thing to improve, such as the use of Max technology needs to improve, and imagination and creativity can be richer and better. Next, I want to talk about our group project. In the study 4 and study 5, maybe we can add more elements in our work instead of a single piece of music, for example some videos and some pictures. Through this, our work may be more interesting. In my personal work, maybe I can think of something new to make my work more distinctive and more interesting. Now my work may be too simple, I just want people to see the changes in their voices in my major project, but the choice of the way to express the change in sound may be too monotonous and boring. Thus, those problems remind me that in the future I have to improve my skills on MAX and try to facing problems rather than simplifying problems, moreover I have to do more by myself research and exploration of how to create the work rather than only ask for help from my tutor! As the problem of the weakness on expression, I do believe with my improvements, my work can bring more intuitive and beautiful effects on both visual and mind in the project in the future.

Study 5 is actually a study that is improved on the basis of study 4. We didn’t have a lot of ideas at the beginning. So we asked our classmates for some suggestions. Most of them thought that we should do some changes on the part of face recognition. We can not only use the distance between the screen and people’s face. We may be able to control the music by using the movements of other organs on the face or even the movements of the body. At the beginning, we thought about whether some slight movements of the face could smoothly control the music. But in the end we found that some facial movements were too small and soft, at the same time, everyone was able to make their facial organs move differently. For example, we want to use the movement of eyebrows to control the music, but the degree of eyebrow movement of each person is very different, so it is difficult to achieve the results we expected. Finally, we changed our mind and chose the movement of the hand to control the music. The change of the choice of the movement had a good effect on our work.

We also have improvements on the techniques’ detail. With our tutor’s help, based on the change before, we still keep observing the data change of the movement to make people have a better experience with our work. Also we added more music in it and people can mix them by their different movement of their body to create their our song.

In the assignment 3, we did not continue to do the research on the Tactile Interaction. We explore the Non-Tactile Interaction in this assignment. This work is supposed to show the emotion of ‘crazy’, which is aim to make people feel crazy when they experience our work. Because this assignment requires people to perform non-tactile interactions, we chose face recognition technology to satisfy. After discussions with the team members, we decided to use both sound and face recognition technology to make people better participate in the experience. In terms of how to combine the two things well, each team member had different ideas about it. But in the end, we all think that it is most appropriate to control the sound playback by the changing of the distance between the body and the screen. The reason why we decided to do like this is that sometimes face recognition is not very sensitive, using some other things to control playback may have a not good effect on people’s experience.

This time we explore a lot and reference a lot other people’s work on the technical level.
We encountered difficulties in setting variables because it was difficult to accurately find the appropriate variables to control the sound playback. Finally, we sought help from the tutor and he solved the problem for us. What’s more, he also help us to reconnect each step and made the work more influent.