My Work

Chautauqua Interactive

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Chautauqua Interactive is a semester-long project undertaken in the Spring '09 Semester at Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. Our goal is to prove that technology can support meaningful interactivity in a traditional theater performance, thus providing the audience with a feeling of agency. In order to achieve this, we have designed and put on a 25 minute-long performance of Rashomon, as well as written a design document and developed the tech for a performance of one of Hamlet's scenes.

The Rashomon performance was what we spent most of our time on, and our main way to showcase our work. We decided to put the play in a 360° stage, with the audience sitting in the middle of the action, on swivel chairs. Three projection screens were located at 120° intervals, intertwining pre-recorded footage with the live action. Also, each swivel chair was rigged with a rotation sensor so that the collective orientation of the audience controlled the audio levels of the three projections. We also monitored the audience's attention via their orientation and used that data to alter the order in which the events were presented during the play.

Below is a list detailing some of the aspects of the project in which I was most involved.

* Experience Design. We took design as a team effort, with no particular design positions assigned. We are very proud of the brainstorming sessions we underwent, and we got used to attacking every problem with fast and creative solutions. Our office never had enough whiteboard space for our ideas.

* Programming. I selected the rotation sensor we used to rig our swivel chairs and programmed the interface along with Goutham Dindukurthi. Goutham and I ideated the algorithm for the dynamic sound setup, as well as the voting system, MIDI interface and sensor communciation. We used C++ for all this.

* Script and Staging. Kyle Dolan and myself crafted the script for the performance based on the original In a Grove story, as well as the Rashomon movie and play. We tailored these stories and complemented them with creations of our own to make a script that fit our theme and our space.

* 2D Art. Alongside Ben Miller, I created the 2D art for the project's promotional material, which can be seen on the sidebar on the right. I was also dedicated to creating quick drawn-to-scale mockups of our performance spaces and tech setups in order to facilitate communication with the Technical Directors that would help us set up our performance on the theater space.

To read more about the project, please visit Chautauqua Interactive's website.