[x-Music Lab 23秋]
Excuse me in advance if I use abnormally strong language within the essay.
It has been quite a while since I wrote something this long that expressed my emotions and my feelings rather than a normal descriptive and logically structured essay. However, I would like to take the opportunity and reflect on not only what I did, but also how I felt as well as logically explain (as much as possible) my honest reaction to our team’s accomplishments throughout the term.
Our task was simple; To prepare for the exhibition that was going to occur in the Zou-no-hana terrace. The journey towards it though, not so simple. Initially, we had a few ideas that were discussed with 3 of the starter members of this project including myself. But generally speaking, we landed on the conclusion that we wanted to provide a sort of discomfort or abnormality by overlapping reality with the virtual world. We started to brainstorm how we could intertwine the realities to create an “interesting” experience, and that was when we were asked if we wanted to exhibit at the Zo-no-Hana terrace as a project within the seminar. Looking back, we should have been more considerate at this early stage regarding the schedule and the time that we had left since that was what we had major problems with after we started running with the project.
We had high hopes and grand imaginations of what we wanted to achieve, yet we were too slow to achieve it. We were thinking of everything we could add volume to the meaning of the piece and the project, but we failed to keep looking at what we initially wanted to achieve. During the weeks to build the project up for the exhibition, we made a lot of unnecessary additions rather than the necessary ones. To be specific, we were asked to add some kind of gimmicks to the piece to add more interactivity for the audiences in the virtual and the real realm. In hindsight, we should not have forgotten our main objective while trying to come up with interactiveness. However, we focused too much on trying to invent and figure out the way to make the piece more interesting, that we forgot our main objective was to overlap the realities to create abnormality.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mtt1_9MeENovzOjWmauo35kq5eV2_ExI/view?usp=drive_link
Link above shows the demo version of the piece. As you could see, although we could see the little bits and pieces of what it would become at the end, in terms of the piece’s strength and messages that it carries, are close to none. A major issue that I feel the need to address here is the quality of communication within our group which is an ongoing issue that I personally think needs addressing. Since we are creating the piece as a group, it is a collective effort that needs intensive collaboration. However, the vectors that our group members were all facing, were unfortunately all different which did not come together very well. The priorities were different, the time attributed to the project was different and so was the outcome of each task that was given to the members. I harshly reflect on myself as well for being the major culprit as I was not able to have the correct mindset as well as could not take the role of biding everyone together although recognizing the hints to this particular problem. What I learned from this term regarding communication was that although we should deliver what we feel and why towards others with honesty, a lot of weight is on how we deliver the message in order for us to achieve efficiency. This includes the tone, as well as the timing to deliver them which dictates the actions of the receiver in both positive and negative ways.
Above are the pictures and videos of the final performance. I am not going to go into technical details regarding the piece too much as it is thoroughly explained in other essays as well as within the NIME documents. But basically, it is a piece that overlaps the virtual world with the real world by creating a 1:1 scale virtual world, then by using speakers and displays, we allow the audiences to feel the overlapped worlds. Voice (modified with effects), footsteps, and a few pre-installed SFXs could be heard within the world. As for the visuals, the avatars as well as the virtual world could be seen through the monitors placed in a square shape.
Now, I am very disappointed in the quality that we have produced at all. Below are the major reasons why I am feeling such a way. One of the major reasons is the lack of a clear main theme or concept. Although we have a vague idea of what we want to achieve, which is to make the audience feel something irregular with the use of the real and virtual world, we do not have anything else. In the best-case scenario, such a goal should be achieved through a more realistic and contextual objective, something that the audience can comprehend and say “Ah, this is the underlying concept, and that’s why they decided to express it this way”. But again, because we did not have this, all of our expressions looked dissonant and not organized. The piece inevitably loses such organization because we do not have a base to go back to for a reference to how certain things should be expressed. As a result, as explained in the previous paragraphs, we went on a long journey to figure out the correct new gimmick or idea to make our piece more interesting, whereas we should have kept things simple and stuck to the core of the project.
In my opinion, the problem stated above became the core problem that would branch out into multiple layers of problems. I am dissatisfied with the sound design of the piece (which became very reliant on the professors at the end), and I am not very fond of the usage of the app “Spatial” as I feel that it is way too underpowered and limited for what we wanted to achieve, and as a cherry on top, during the exhibition, one of the monitors broke by accident which shows the lack of management abilities regarding the entirety of the project. I am very thankful for the teammates who collaborated with me to create the piece, however, I am sorry yet very confident that I cannot be proud when I look at the piece.
Of course, I am not blaming others for the result. My genuine failure to be able to collaborate efficiently with the time we have together and my lack of passion and dedication contribute hugely to the outcome of the project. had I been more involved in the decision-making or had I been more stubborn about the things that I suggested throughout the project, the results might have come out differently which is something that I will definitely think about even after the end of the project. Although I have learned a lot throughout the project, one thing that I would like to mention at the end is that I have learned how hard it is to become and stay passionate about your own piece and project. There are just too many excuses that you can say to avoid responsibilities and makeing an effort. But in the end, it all comes down to how much you have dedicated yourself sincerely towards the piece to be able to say “We are proud of the piece we have created.“
