Sometimes you feel down, yet you still have to go outside and slap on a smile. If only it were as easy as dialing a knob. A TouchDesigner mood control experiment paired with an Arduino Uno.
Project Details
Role: Creator and Developer
Development Platform: TouchDesigner
Published on: Desktop
Programming Language: Python
Features: Potentiometer interaction connected to Arduino Uno
Inspiration & Concept
This project came out of two things happening at once: wanting to explore TouchDesigner as a new creative medium and needing to document how I was actually feeling in that moment.
There is soooo much going on in the world, and that is on top of everything folks may be experiencing in their own lives. Despite all of it, we sometimes have to go about our day like everything is fine. I started feeling the disconnect between how I presented myself in public and how I actually felt inside. This was my way of putting that tension into something I could touch.
How I Built the TouchDesigner Mood Experiment
I started by getting the Arduino functionality working inside TouchDesigner. Once I successfully got TouchDesigner to recognize the movements of the knob, I mapped that movement to the frames of a video. Turning in one direction advances playback, and turning in the other reverses it. With the functionality in place, I recorded and edited the final video and swapped it in for the test video.