Isadora

In today's lecture we were taught about the concept of Isadora, a software named to realize the performances of Troika Rach, a media intensive dance company. Isadora allows users to manipulate images in many possible ways to create 'media intensive theatrical experiences' (Tronix), often in synchronisation to music as shown in concerts and nightclubs.

The link below shows an example of someone using the Isadora tool 'Projection Mask' to manipulate a single moving image...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spd77d6yZ-s

Our brief involved deciding on a short interactive narrative experience allowing users to guide their exploration in traversing the narrative. A Halloween theme was set for the task and as a group we discussed a range of ideas to choose from. A few of our ideas involved trick or treating, with the user having control of knocking on the doors and placing the treats in the child's basket, along with a haunted house with eerie objects and people moving behind the windows accompanied by audio to enhance the narrative.
It was decided that we would go with the haunted house idea as we would have more elements to play around with such as bats, ghosts, a family walking into the driveway of the haunted house and a witch flying across the moon to add to the Halloween theme.

As my part of the research stage i gathered a range of images to use in Isadora in order to manipulate at a later date. I also gathered a few audio clips off freesound.org that were Halloween related such as a witch's cackle, a creaky gate opening and the sound of a baby crying in distress.
 Next week we will begin to create our Isadora composition as today was more about researching into the software and watching tutorials to become more familiar with how it worked. I will keep you posted on how we progress!