Bright
When was the last time you have visited a live music event or performance? Chances are it is not too long ago and you may or may not remember much of it. But if you remember a show, what do you remember of it, what made it special? There is often an entire team responsible for the experience on and around the stage. People make sure the sound is okay, both for the audience and the performer himself. Someone has designed the stage, helped with makeup, clothing, effects and also important: lights. Sadly, many live performances have the same appearance nowadays, especially in the world of beginning and upcoming musicians. In this world, there is little budget for a team to design and develop other parts of the show. Therefore, the musician would have to make decisions all on its own. Artists mainly get their inspiration from successful artists, but often cannot translate it to their own level. In addition, their development (especially in the beginning) is mainly focused on improving and finding ‘their sound’, with the results of an underdeveloped vision for their performance. The industry has responded by giving large freedom to the technician that builds the show around the artist. The artist still has input, albeit minimal and often shallow. The result is that performances do not fit at all with the performer’s vision and lack uniqueness overall.
Bright is a tool for upcoming music artist to develop a light plan for their live music performance. The light plan can then function as a communication medium with the light technician of the performance. This way, the light show can function as an amplification or extension of the story that the musician wants to tell through his music. This will be in contrast with the current situation where the light show is often an extra, developed on the spot by the light specialist who does not know the song at all. The final design incorporates the concept in a touch based product, using an interface that can switch between different perspectives and provides basic light editing customizability. The tool was developed through four iterations using user input from students from the Rockacademie in Tilburg and experts in the live music performance industry. Evaluation was performed with other students from the Rockacademie and proved that the concept has potential, but adaptions have to be made. Future work illustrates the focus on editing the concept to be more business focused. Other future work is related to the implementation of more features for a greater customizability. In addition, changes to the concept should be made to make it more usable as a standalone application which would exist next to the more professional physical product.
The final prototype was made by hand, using mainly MDF as building material for the case. The made case was then spray-painted with 7 layers to accomplish a glossy, high-end finish. In addition, some plastic parts were added at the parts that needed to be transparent. At the back of the housing a cloth part was added for comfort. Next to that was the addition of a 3D printed knob that would fit the electronics inside. The electronics consisted out of an Arduino with gyroscope sensors and a potentiometer. This Arduino was then connected to a tablet inside the housing on which an instance of Unity3D was processing the sensordata into an actuated scene. The Unity3D application itself handled the touch input of the user and rendered the interface. When putting all these components together, the final prototype was build.
