The Mother of All: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nature

The Mother of All: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Nature is adapted from rituals around Persian New Year–particularly Chaharshanbeh soori, this project is a ceremony for renewal and connection back to nature–a New Nature–defined by oil, technoscape, and scarcity.  What do these rituals that are based on nature and the natural environment look like in this New Nature?  Participants jump over dead technology to cleanse and renew themselves to simulate the warm fire they once leaped over in the old tradition that used natural elements and symbols.

Technology and Process:

The main purpose was to develop a large system around the ritual experience, where Arduino would talk to Unity3D through a serial connection.  I wanted to create a physical and simulated context, where physical computing communicated with the 3D realm.  I initially began with an ultrasonic sensor, or distance sensor, as part of the jumping interaction, detecting when one would jump over the fire.  I managed to connect the Arduino serial readings (through printing to console) to Unity.  After testing the interaction I found that I needed to change the sensor, being that it would be difficult to definitely sense the person jumping.  I needed to create a pressure sensor.  I developed one based on Liza Stark’s example of the pressure sensor matrix (http://thesoftcircuiteer.net/welcome-to-the-pressure-sensor-matrix/).

When participants would jump and land on the pressure sensor, the particle system fire in Unity3D would simulate and animate.

Code (Arduino + Unity3D): https://github.com/ekermani/the-mother-of-all

Video: https://vimeo.com/216758985

Additional Documentation: https://majorstustustudio.tumblr.com/the-mother-of-all

 

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