Creative Media Practice - Isadora

Today we were introduced to the program called 'Isadora'. This software is, as their websites suggests:

The award-winning, real-time media manipulation software to create stunningly interactive visuals, sounds, and environments.'

Isadora allows you to create interactive environments for users to explore using various means. It was created by Mark Coniglio, a media artist and composer who co-founded the Troika Ranch performance ensemble who create contemporary pieces of art that include multiple art forms and technology. He is a creative mind who developed Isadora for himself and his company and then released it to the world for others to use as well. An interesting fact I discovered whilst researching him was that he once worked as an assistant to Danny Elfman, my favourite composer, who composes music for most of Tim Burton's films.

When we first had a glimpse in to the software I was pretty worried because it looks very complicated as you can see:

Once you start to play with the software however, you get used to its crazy layouts and begin to see that its capabilities are endless. Many people in the media industry use Isadora for their production. Not only do performance artists use it for visual displays and incorporating it in to live performance, but filmmakers are now embracing the software as well. We looked at the work of Francis Ford Coppola for example and his film 'Twixt'. He used Isadora for this production because he wanted to manipulate not only what the audience was seeing and hearing but also their actual experience.

"Because cinema is now electronic and digital, it is no longer a long strip of celluloid that has to go the way it was determined... Because a film is made up of digital files it means the director, if he were there and wanted to take the time to go to each show, he could essentially change the experience to suit the audience." 

Francis Ford Coppola (2011)

We looked at some performance pieces that people had made using Isadora, for example:

Interactive Sound Performance 'Music & Light' by Francesca Bardaro

From this work you get the sense of what can be achieved with the software. Live action filming, sound, visual effects and more can be combined to create a scenario or multiple screens to depict a story world or even just something that looks pretty awesome!

After we looked at some work that had been created using Isadora, we were given a mini-brief which involved getting in to groups and creating something with the software ourselves. The brief, because of the time of year, was to create something relating to Halloween. That was it. So we had a lot of room for movement but we just had to make it interactive for the audience.

We were put in to groups and then got started on some ideas for what we could make. I decided to just do a rough sketch of my idea, excuse my pitiful drawing.

My idea was to have a haunted house which you could interact with by clicking the windows and doors. Various films and sounds would play when you clicked on different areas of the house. You could also enter the house from the main door and interact inside a grand hallway with ghosts and others mischievous characters. Stories of the characters could be introduced using dialogue whilst some spooky images and sounds appeared throughout.

We expanded our ideas on to a large sheet of paper to visualise the full project and components that we could use.

Technology itself again failed JMU today because nobody could really access Isadora properly and also the laptops that were handed out wouldn't open Isadora because they were too old and not compatible with the software. So we decided to leave that for now and focus on what we would collect to use in the final piece. We divided this up; I would collect the still images that we could use, the others would collect the moving images and the sounds. We also looked at various haunted house images to use for the main starting point. Here are some haunted houses that I collected.

I like the idea of zooming in to the windows or doors to see various spooky scenes unfolding. I don't think having something linear would really matter because its more about entertaining and spooking the user/audience. As you can see from the big plan we are looking at using many different Halloween related things so it should be a huge mash up of scary bits hopefully!

I am going to have a go at downloading the free version of Isadora over the weekend for a play around to see if I can get used to the software. Hopefully this version will work on my own laptop better than those from university!

Speak Soon!