During the QUT Design Festival, I had the opportunity to showcase my installation, Sketch Lab, which is an immersive and multi-sensory experience that invites participants to move their bodies to create layers of sound and visual outputs. I have been DJ’ing for over 15 years, and have a deep love for creating and sharing music, particularly electronic music. With this in mind, I wanted to create an installation that would allow people to playfully create and share sounds, regardless of their technical skill.
The creative process
For my graduate project, I set out to craft an installation that combined my passion for sound-reactive visuals and electronic music. The aim was to create a playful response to the brief of ‘ludic’ design. Using Touch Designer, a node-based programming software, I mapped body movements using a motion-tracking Kinect camera and created original loops and samples in a music production program called Ableton. Additionally, I drew a series of simple hand-drawn illustrations which were triggered by different sound outputs within Touch Designer. I also created a customised interface on the iPad that allowed people to control many of these elements.
Although there were several challenges along the way, learning how to tie everything together was a fun and satisfying journey. Watching people interact and enjoy playing with the installation made it all worth it. From the very beginning of my graduate project, I knew that I wanted to create an installation that incorporated sound. As a DJ, producing and sharing music has been a big part of my life, and I wanted to make it accessible to others. By using technology to map body movements and combining it with my music production skills, I was able to create Sketch Lab, a participatory and playful installation.
Real world applications
During my degree, I was exposed to a wide range of technologies that I had not really used before, including augmented reality and virtual reality. Being able to prototype augmented reality experiences was something I did not expect to be able to learn so quickly. I also learned about design strategy, effective UX and UI design, and how important thorough user testing can be to fine-tune prototypes and deliver the best possible output. My initial idea of interaction design was quite limited before entering the degree program, and even now after completing, it is still hard to sum up as the career pathways from this degree are so incredibly broad. But I can certainly say that I have enjoyed every unit of the degree and look forward to continuing to put my newly-learnt skills into action.
