Hypercinema Week 10 - 14 Cornell box

Project in pairs with Guy Mizrachi

When we started brainstorming we had a few rough ideas in mind:

• A box filled with postcards from different times of a persons life that convey its memories.Or depicting an historical timeline passing by. this would happen through deconstructing/unfolding the postcards.

• A puppet show that take place inside a wooden box

• A letter envelope as a box with different stamps the user can interact with and change their animation.

• An istallation of cartboard box you can pick into through a hole.

  
  

Eventually we decided on making the installation of the cart-board box you pick into that will encompass the sense of postcard like memory storytelling and puppet show aesthetics.

The user will pick into the box from a bird eyes view and will enter to an endless loop journey through this memory box. The objects inside the box will be cut outs of Jerusalem and memories we both have from this city that unfold in a non linear way. The cart board is used to bring the user to the realms of a change, movement, a new start and nostalgia (like the one you experience when you are moving to a new house, city or continent and packing all of your belongings and reflecting on them).

The box will have a screen in the bottom of it and the user will zoom in inside the box kind of falling into the rabbit hole, with objects floating or unfolding.

Here is the storyboard and installation sketch.

This is the david tower in cartboard - one of the monuments we will use to set up the iconic mood of Jerusalem

And here are the different opitions of the layout of the objects inside the box:

one more frontal, a circular one and a more 3d looking one:

The next step was to create some cart bord cutouts in order to understand how the experience is going to feel better.

We then began experimenting with the composition in unity trying to create a radial composition that would feel like the user is falling into a rabbit hole. We applied the cart board images on planes with normal maps:

The result felt a bit to chaotic and not a good fit for a rectangular box.

We decided to go with the option of creating a flat frontal cart-board composition which will allow the user to dive into an illustration of a memories from Jerusalem. We wanted the aestethics to reflect the fragility and elusiveness of memories in contrast with iconic illustrations of Jerusalem and its ancient wall, that represents our desperate inescapable need of us as individuals and societies to construct narratives from these elusive memory fragments.

As a part of the magical nostalgia feeling we felt like a handle or a crank would be a good addition as a user control to zoom in and out, inspired by Michelle Gondry's The sienece of sleep

Later we agreed to focus on one memory, and delivering it as an interactive narrated story. I came up with a memory I had of two super cute porcupines who used to roam in my backyard in Jerusalem, annoying the neighbors and scaring me occasionally running through the bushes.

The next step was creating an initial storyboard:

I recorded the audio file for the narration and used audio triggers in unity connected to empty objects for the user to activate them. We chose to record it on a voice memo to create a sense of intimacy and I tried to retell it from memory so it will feel more authentic and less like an artificial naration We later realized that the storytelling will improve if we not only move from the public to the personal but also from the figurative to the abstract mimicking the unfolding of a memory.

Unfortunately this storyboard was lost in the chaos of finals on the floor, but it was the fundation for the experience we have now: