Category: Final Concept

Overtime, the significance of taking care of our planet for ourselves and the generations after us has become more and more important to me. I’ve realized a lot about the damage we’re creating by living on Earth and the impact it has on us and the other species that live on this planet. I value the life I have and the planet we live on, and my goal for this project is to demonstrate the importance of taking care of it. With this project I want to communicate to my audience and connect with them on a deeper level. This project can relate to every single person in one way or another, and I hope to bring out that realization through projection mapping. Though this doesn’t reflect my future aspirations, it’s important to me and will hopefully make a difference to a few peoples everyday lives. The interest in my project should be high because this issue effects everyone whether they know it or not. Even if some people believe that nothing can happen during their life time, they have to recognize their future children or family members will be impacted by the way we leave it.

My project will be different that existing projects because it will be an interactive exhibit. Instead of reading about the causes and effects of recycling, you’ll be able to view it on a sphere shaped object that will represent the globe. You’ll also be able to feel the heat from a heat lamp that demonstrates the heating of the Earth, and see produced trash on the ground.

I envision an open room with a giant sphere (around 7ft x 7ft) hanging from the ceiling with trash on the floor underneath it in a circular shape, and a heat lamp in one of the corners. I want the earth to be projected on the sphere with statistics and data visuals interchanging. On one wall, I want to possibly have time lapses going for different representations of land that now has piles of waste on it. On the other two sides I want to have options 1 and 2 for which direction we can go with if we chose to recycle or not. On the last wall I want to represent how this is effecting our animals and wildlife on Earth, and how it can affect the future of our families and generations.

Algorithmic/automated composition is an idea that has been around for a very long time now, but has only had major advances in the last 30 years or so, thanks the the advances of computers. Even then, I haven’t found as much research on this topic as other more popular topics. I want to take this research and extend it into the entertainment field.

My project involves a program that takes music from an already existing band or genre, and creates its own music that will sound similar to the music categorized in the already existing band or genre. I have a heavy interest in music and computer science, and I wanted to combine these interests with this project because I feel they go very well together. In the future, I want to expand upon this project by incorporating machine learning elements in order to make this idea more free-form.

I feel that this field could have a great impact on entertainment. For example, it could be used to help musicians with writer’s block by giving them a base to go off of when writing music. It could also be used to aid with incorporating elements of a different, less familiar genre in one’s music. There are tons of possibilities that could be offered by my type of project.

The way I see it working starts by transcribing songs of a specific artist into a MIDI score. This MIDI score will contain the notes played by each instrument in the song as data. The program then takes in this data as input. With multiple MIDI scores, the program will analyze the song to figure out certain characteristics of the song, such as the key. Using the individual notes from each instrument, the program will construct instrument parts for a new song.

One way of doing this last step would be with Markov chains. The Markov chain could store data about the note choices in a song. Along with the individual note choices, it would store the probability of the next note being a certain note. For example, if an A note comes up in the song, it could store the chance of the next note being C as 50% (based on what happens when an A occurs in the rest of the song), the chance of the next note being E as 25%, and so on.

I plan to do some research on other methods that could help me with this step, as I see this being the most difficult part of my project. In addition to that, I will need to spend a decent amount of time transcribing songs to MIDI so that I have data to go off of.

For my senior thesis project, I will be producing an 11-minute pilot of an original show “Freak and the Beast.” The pilot will follow two puppet best friends (only known as their bully-given nicknames “Freak” and “The Beast”) on their first day of seventh grade. I also plan on making the actual exhibit at Showcase a major focus of my time next semester. I want a fully immersive, interactive experience with my project sketches, storyboards, a set, and the puppets, and possibly materials for people to make their own mini-puppets or at least a camera set-up for folks to test out performing some of my puppets on-screen.

I was inspired to do this project by the challenge of combining my passions for children’s television, comedy, writing, and set design. I have always looked up to creative icons like Jim Henson and Fred Rogers, and I suddenly realized they were both puppeteers! Since diving into puppets, I have fully realized the potential of this medium to combine all of my relevant skills into something that is passion-driven and also hireable (I hope to work in producing children’s television.)

My project will be different from existing media in the non-traditional themes I will be exploring in Freak and the Beast. First, the protagonists are two girl best friends who do not fall into stereotypes. Female friendships are so often left out of media, even children’s media, and when they are portrayed, are rarely given the nuance of other friendships. Sure, these two girls are fussy and whiny and a little insecure — like all middle schoolers! — but they are also goofy, smart, and a little gross. I am also very passionate about children’s shows that don’t talk down to kids or young teens, and let them indulge in weirdness. I feel like there has been a shift in kid’s TV towards safe, wholesome, moral-at-the-end stories, completely washed of all the weirdness of 90s TV like Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, PowerPuff Girls, and Pinky and the Brain. I’d like to think the two can coexist! I hope to promote healthy themes like being a good friend and sticking up for yourself, along with embracing your weirdness! I never want to feel like I’m preaching to kids, as well as that works with a Pre-K audience. Older kids can read subtlety, and I feel like modern shows underestimate their intelligence as well as their breadth of interests! Kids like weird stuff. If you surround the nugget of wisdom with a weird, goofy, funny show, kind of like a dog’s medicine slathered in peanut butter, you can really hit home with them. And get rid of their heartworms.

Technically, as I’ve discussed in other posts, I’ve been learning how to make Muppet-style puppets all summer. You can find my latest prototype and self-imposed production schedule in my last post.

I’m experienced in woodworking, so I will be using those skills to build sets for the show. They’ll be multipurpose by switching out props/class posters/ surroundings/etc.

Stylistically, I’ve been learning a lot by studying the development of puppets for Sesame Street and The Muppets. I visited the Jim Henson Exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image and purchased Jim Henson’s journals, so those have been a great source of inspiration as well as the Defunctland YT Series on Jim Henson.