Summary of the week: This week was Quarters! We prepared to present our progress so far, spoke to faculty, and received feedback. We also worked with our client to decide definitively on a concept and a direction forward for our installation. Additionally, we worked on our team logo!
Faculty Meeting with Shirley and John
We met with our faculty advisors and discussed our plan for quarters! We made plans for presenting our ideas and breaking down and understanding faculty comments.
Meeting with Brenda
Angie and Lauren met with Brenda Harger to get her advice for our project. As she has a background in theater, we really appreciated hearing about how her productions have run in the past. We also appreciated her advice about the intricacies of designing an installation that does not interfere with the show itself, but complements the show and supports the context needed for the production.
Quarters
At this point, we had not yet nailed down a final concept for our installation with our client. Therefore, for quarters, we decided to present some of the concepts that had previously been considered to give context for our faculty. We also wanted to use Quarters as an opportunity to discuss strategies for working effectively with a client and how to design a concept that will fit both the client and team needs.
Here are the previous concepts that we presented to the faculty:
Mr. Hooper’s Store: Guests can visit Mr. Hooper’s corner store and interact with a puppet version of Mr. Hooper to build an emotional connection. Mr. Hooper will give guests a “receipt” to take away which has a line from the play on it. (Concept art by Angie)
A conversation between two animated figures: Two characters (a parent and a child) have a conversation that the audience can listen to and influence through factors like crowd noise. (Concept art by Angie)
Puppet Shakespeare Fool/Jester: A large jester puppet that can interact with guests. The jester puppet is also surrounded by toy blocks that the guests can play with. These toy blocks also connect with the play as the set design includes toy blocks. (Concept art by Angie)
We presented these ideas and had discussions with 21 faculty members: Brenda, Jonathan, Ricardo, Dave C, John D, Mike, Ralph, Ruth, Mo, Charles, Scott, Shirley Y, Shirley S, Drew, Jesse, Heather, Harvey, Steve, Bryan, Jon U, and Dave P.
Some take-aways from the faculty comments were:
- Engage spectators, not just those actively interacting
- Focus on emotional goals (What does our team want to invoke in the guest? How do we want them to feel?). Emotions will drive everything else
- Use technology only to service the main emotional goals
- Simpler can be better for driving emotions
- Decide with the client on a platform. Details can change as the project progresses, but knowing the overall general platform will help the project progress beyond blue sky stage
- Don’t compete with the show, but do complement it
Concept Ideating
With Quarters feedback from the faculty in mind, the team got together to come up with a new concept and direction that we would be excited to pitch to our client, Eliot.
We reflected on the previous concepts that we had pitched and what aspects of them were successful, exciting, and interesting for both the team and our client. We aimed to use our lessons learned to inform our paths forward. Some of the common threads between our best ideas included building an immersive set environment, interacting with a character, and relating the installation to the production. We combined these threads of success with elements from the Mr. Hooper’s Store and Puppet Shakespeare Fool/Jester concepts to create the Fool’s Court.
The Fool’s Court: Guests interact with a fool puppet! The fool will joke and laugh with the guests, but can also launch into more serious discussions of personal questions. There are also play mats and toy blocks for guests to play with that tie into the childhood themes of the set and production. There are even shelves on the Fool’s Court for toy blocks so that guests can build up, tear down, and customize the installation set. (Concept art by Angie)
Client Meeting with Eliot
The goal of our client meeting with Eliot was to pitch our new Fool’s Court concept and get her thoughts and feedback.
The team felt that the Fool’s Court was a strong concept for several reasons:
- It incorporated elements of both King Lear and childhood
- It tied directly into the set of the production with the toy blocks
- It had a puppet that could provide personalized interactions for guests
- It had an engaging environment design that would draw guests in
- It could serve as a platform and a direction forward with details able to be adjusted along the way
Ultimately, however, Eliot was concerned that the Shakespearean Fool character might be misleading as he does not actually appear in the production and preferred that we move in a different direction.
Final Concept Ideating
A recurring theme from our meetings with our client, Eliot, was the storm from “King Lear.” We knew that our client and the production design team liked that general theme, so our team tried to use that as a point of inspiration for our final concept ideation/designs.
Lauren pitched a concept for an immersive storm environment with directional audio. In her time at Level99, she was exposed to directional speaker domes that allowed guests to only hear the audio if they were standing directly underneath the speaker dome.
Level99 Wavelength Soundscape with speaker dome technology
Lauren pitched that the domes could be placed around the lobby and play sounds like lines from the play, sound effects, and personal questions. The speaker domes could even be themed as umbrellas in the storm environment. This would serve as immersive environment theming as well as indirect control that encourages guests to go underneath the domes. A positive aspect of this idea as well is that it requires almost no activation energy to participate. Even guests that are just casually walking through the lobby might walk under a dome and experience the sounds. Guests that want to be more involved can walk around the space and visit each dome to hear all of the audio.
With this concept, the team worked on designing a “Storm of Voices” audio platform.
Storm of Voices team mind mapping
Concept art by Lauren
This concept would serve as a strong platform moving forward as there is a strong central concept, but there are also several elements that can be edited and adjusted along the way.
Meeting with Eliot, Kristi, Shirley, and John
In our meeting, the team shared that it was crucial for everyone to be on the same page. We all needed to make a final decision on the concept of the installation so that our team could move forward in the process.
With this in mind, we shared our final concept design, the Storm of Voices. Everyone loved the idea! They loved the immersive set environment, emotional impact, and innovative use of technology. The Storm of Voices was officially approved. We are all very happy to be moving forward with this concept!
We also got a few notes of considerations to keep in mind moving forward like whether we will have the ability to hang from the ceiling or not, whether we will be able to cover the windows or not, and where people tend to linger in the lobby. We will investigate these details as we move forward in our design process!
Team Logo Drafts
This week, Aldora also created some initial potential logo designs for our team, Curtain Call! These were the first four iterations sent to Shirley Yee and our advisors:
Concerns were brought up about the telephone being potentially misleading. Shirley Y, John, and Shirley S preferred the theater curtains and spotlight logo concepts as they read more clearly as theater. Our team really liked the spotlight concept, so we will continue in this direction for our logo design.