Tale of Us
Audio-Visual Installation
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Audio-Visual Installation 🔉
Project Overview
Nowadays, with the continuous development of society and the emergence of social issues, anxiety is becoming a common state of mind. In a sense, we can say that we have entered the era of "national anxiety". Social anxiety is the public's anxiety and insecurity in the face of many social uncertainties, which gradually affects our mental health to a certain extent.
"Tale of Us" as an audio-visual installation to establish empathy and emotional interaction with the audience, and inform the audience to pay attention to the anxiety caused by social issues, and enhance emotional awareness to deal with this problem. "Tale of Us" will be used for indoor exhibitions which are related to mental health and social issues, such as science gallery
Design Process
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Effect
Adobe Premiere
Audacity
Timeline
Overall: 8 weeks
Testing: 2 weeks
Design Thinking
The target people are those who are 18- 40 years old who are experiencing social anxiety or those who don’t know about social anxiety. The target location is the indoor public space of the Science Gallery. The project goal is to reduce the social anxiety of the target people or to pay attention to social anxiety
"Tale of Us" has been inspired by the theory of emotional empathy. It establishes emotional empathy with the audience through personal experiences or stories in the form of audiovisual narratives, and helps the audience to face the impact of social anxiety in order to reduce its impact on stress levels.
Method & Techniques
The project will collect a real personal experience of social anxiety, and use the plot of the story to express it in an animated way, using it as a key point to build an empathic relationship, to express the inner feelings and state of the storyteller in an audio-visual narrative way, and to build an empathic relationship with the storyteller at the time of the viewing, to achieve the effect of guiding the audience
Motion graphics production, sound capture and video projection are the technics used. The video is synthesized after the visual and voice capture and projected on the projection area (e.g. whiteboard, screen, wall, etc.) by means of a projector
Story & Color
This color use for the content of age 15-16 will present as force, anger and passion.
I finally chose to use one of the stories collected through interviews with six people. The reason for this selection is that the overall story has a sense of rhythm and it is easier to stimulate the audience's empathic emotions through the use of key words, while the content is also consistent with the research direction of this project, and the experiences about different life stages in the story can be also mapped to the emotions caused by different social issues.
This color use for the content of age 20 will present as confidence, youthful, brave, casualness, playful and energetic, pleasure
This color use for the content of age 30 will present as freshness，and new.
At the end of the story the author talks to the viewer about his personal transformation givinb positive guidance, which brings the culmination of the narrative.
The motion graphics and text in this project will use colors to distinguish between the emotional content of each life stage. The use of colors serves to convey the mood and inner world of the storyteller.
This color use for the content of age 30 will present as freedom, spiritually
This color use for the content of age 30 will present as nature and happiness
Design Process
Team
Siyu Julie Yao
Role
Illustration design
Projection art
Video Editing
Motion graphic design
The motion graphics part of the project requires extracting key information from the story and creating vector graphics before making the motion effects. Motion graphics production, sound capture and video projection are the technics used. The video is synthesized after the visual and voice capture and projected on the projection area (e.g. whiteboard, screen, wall, etc.) by means of a projector
The story was read with a human voice, and the reading pace and mood were adjusted according to the storyline to keep the overall recording better integrated with the story.
As for the video mapping, I used AE for projection positioning, and projected corresponding content at different times and different areas according to the story line, so that the rhythm of the story can be echoed with the video projection, gradually adding to the atmosphere.
Using the indoor exhibition room as the target location, I first mocked up a sketch of the scene for the indoor project, and then, based on the information in the sketch, I mocked up the final exhibit
Final Outcome
Due to Covid issues, I couldn’t bring installation into exhibition room, so while I finished project, I only can project at my home.
But it was a fun experience to complete “Tale of Us”. As my graduate project my aim is bring the best experience to the audience, I hope the video projection art will bring some emotional empathy thinking to you. please enjoy the video.
What’s Next
How would you continue this project? Was there something that you would’ve loved to do but didn’t have the time or resources? What advice would you give to the team or the designer following you?
What new hard skill, soft skill, trick, or tool did you learn throughout the project? Was there any design practice you’ve tried for the first time? How did this project contribute to your growth as a designer? Did you have any preconceptions that were crushed? What did you learn throughout this project that’s influencing the way you design?