Hi All,
I am a finnish-american interaction, concept and experience designer and electronic musician, I lived in NYC for 20 years, taught masters thesis and interaction studios at Parsons Design School MFADT. I work currently from my native Helsinki Finland, 1952 Olympic Village via my Parasense production company on a wide range of projects within interactive, immersive and multisensory fields, as well as music therapy and special needs groups/people in autism spectrum. Among other things, I mentor projects at Metropolia XR Center, and guide final thesis projects at Aalto University Sound in New Media program.
I wanted to relay news about our longer term hybrid project: Tabula Rasa multisensory expression space, which utilizes TouchDesigner as a central enabler of the installation, along with Mediapipe, novel machine learning implementation for individual user motion scaling and Cycling74 Max for realtime sound and vibrotactile output.
In essence, Tabula Rasa is a space located at the Autism Foundation Finland´s new Pacius space for its clients. It enables free subtle gentle embodied gestural interaction with visual, sonic and vibrotactile outputs chosen from a group of presets. The installaton differs from more traditional sensory rooms and gamified spaces by its organic, subtle interaction, which pulls its experience gently in over time, into a unique flow type of a state. In Tabula Rasa, its experiences sees and feels various representations of one´s body and gestures, developing visuals, sonic and vibrotactile output over time.
Tabula Rasa´s concept was born from an earlier diip.parasense.fi, a vibrotactile collective bodily instrument, which was presented here in Helsinki. I and my longtime colleague Jani wanted to dwelve deeply into audiovisual embodied interaction, yet in a sensitive manner so that sonic, visual and interaction aspects would be supportive of each other in adaptive ways, none of them dominating or "eating away" from another sensory area.
In Tabula Rasa, there are no "wrong" things one can do, and the installation is able to bit by bit rescale its mappings, based on machine learning understanding various users' tendencies to move, so it does not behave the same way with everyone. The installation does not try to heal anyone from anything, but rather, offers an adaptive, gentle sensitive space for self expression, an embodied meditative multisensory journey.
From a technological standpoint, we have had the luxury of working with brilliant companies: Epson which provided a 4K Ultra Short Throw laser projector; Genelec which provided two G-Two monitors and an F-One Subwoofer; Cycling74/Ableton which provided a copy of Max software and, finally: our sincere thanks to Derivative for their support and access to TouchDesigner, which has been in the center of everything.
Other key hardware in the project includes a Mac Studio M2 Ultra, and 1080p Webcam (we used Kinect Azure cameras initially but moved to using a 1080p Webcam with Google´s Mediapipe as it worked better and steadier in this particular project). We have also created a novel vibrotactile floor, built at Helsinki City´s Uusix Verstaat. Clark Synthesis vibrotactile actuators are attached to the floor, and are driven by an amazing vintage handmade Teac A-H500i amp (5hz-80Khz), and I put together a custom rack for the project with components from Thomann, Middle Atlantic and Neutrik.
The experiential and interaction design aspects we have been realizing with TouchDesigner and Max via OSC communication, have been very exciting, along with the joint development journey and testing together with Autism Foundation clients and specialists. An equally inspiring part of the experience has definitely been the witnessing of the actual human interaction and experiencing of our installation:
We have been working with some of the most challenging Autism Foundation clients, requiring most support. The results have been majorly inspirational, at times also surprising. People who almost never say anything, or do not move majorly, have started suddenly talking in firm Finnish, like a reporter, or have started moving and expressing themselves in novel ways suddenly. Others have engaged via a type of poetry, or almost.. "rapping", or feeling out, touching and closely embracing the vibrotactile floor with their bodies, doing morse coding with the floor, not always necessarily concentrating on visuals. In short, the spectrum of ways in which people experience our space has been huge, consisting of tons of different reactions and approaches, which has been great and eye opening.
Along with numerous test layers at the Autism Foundation facility in Herttoniemi Helsinki, We have also had the luxury to betatest the installation at the new amazing Helsinki central library OODI, a true Willy Wonka DIY/maker/hacker/immersive experience space, voted as the best library in the world a few years back.The feedback has been systematically positive, us receiving thumbs up from the wider audience at OODI library as well as from Autism Foundation clients and staff, while we have not taken any of it for granted at any point.
We have worked on the project for 2+ years. I (Marko Tandefelt) have worked on the concept and experience design, production and AV- and sensor technology. My longtime colleague Jani Hietanen, Finnish film sound engineer, sound designer and computer visualist has worked on concept and experience design, TouchDesigner and Max coding. We have collaborated also with interior design and Aalto University professor Esa Vesmanen from Puredesign Helsinki on the physical environment. We have had a pleasure to work with a brilliant group of people from Jyväskylä University´s Music Therapy teaching and research clinic, one of the leading institutions in the field worldwide: University researcher, Dr. Esa Ala-Ruona, who has worked with us on the initial concept, movement analysis and vibrotactility and Dr. Juan Ignacio Mendoza Garay who has worked on the motion research, machine learning and related Max coding.
Thank you majorly to Autism Foundation Finland for their faith: Herttoniemi unit guidance and coaching services customers and staff, Kalle Kämäräinen, Vilma Haimila, Synnöve Lindberg, Marjo Virnes, Mervi Savonsalmi. The Autism Foundation´s www page for the Tabula Rasa project is here. The project has been supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation and Taike/Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.
Finally: I and my colleague Jani Hietanen are open to collaborating with positive people in realizing novel boundary pushing hybrid and inspirational multisensory, immersive and interactive projects. We can be freely contacted if you have ideas/aspirations within related areas, or have questions about Tabula Rasa. More about what we have been working on can be seen at the below Parasense www site.
Best regards,
Marko Tandefelt
