Visual programming
Waveforms as a visual material
In TouchDesigner, I explored wave patterns and amplitude as the basis for projected visuals. The resulting forms gave the performance a changing visual presence behind the participants.
Audiovisual performance · Creative computing
Depersonalization.
Present in the room.
Somewhere else in mind.
A live performance exploring digital distraction through projected waveforms, wearable sensing, and shifting light.
Explore the project
01 / The idea
When attention
drifts away.
I began with a familiar scene: people sharing a physical space while their attention is absorbed by a screen. Depersonalization explores the uneasy feeling of being present, yet absent.
The project uses the image of a non-player character, or NPC, as a metaphor for automatic behavior. I translated that question into a performance: how might a shift in attention become something we can see?
02 / The interaction
Making a shift
perceptible.
The interaction concept begins with two people facing one another. Wearable readings and a webcam-based experiment provide inputs; projected waveforms and lighting give the encounter a visible, spatial response.
01 / Encounter
Begin a conversation
A seated participant wears a MUSE 2 headset.
02 / Input
Explore the signals
Compare incoming readings and experiment with webcam classification.
03 / Expression
Change the scene
Waveforms and light turn the concept into a performance.
Interaction concept / expressive interpretation of signals
A performance language
I explored MUSE 2 readings alongside a MobileNet image-classification experiment in p5.js. These inputs helped frame the relationship between a person’s behavior and the scene around them.
Early sketches also considered a wearable microcurrent cue. The project’s central question remained expressive: how could sensing, movement, and light make the experience of distraction perceptible?
03 / The making
Signals, staged
as an experience.
I developed the work across visual programming, lighting control, and performance planning. Each layer shaped how the encounter would read in the room and on camera.
Lighting control
A spotlight that opens out
I used a DMX lighting system to control intensity and shift between a focused spotlight and a broader wash. Light made the participants and their movements part of the visual composition.
Performance planning
Composing the encounter
I wrote a storyboard with camera specifications and detailed shot descriptions, then set up the space around the participants, screen, and lighting. The documentation captures both the face-to-face arrangement and the view from behind each participant.
04 / The performance
An invisible drift.
A visible atmosphere.
The final documentation brings the layers together: two people, a table, a projected waveform, and light that shapes the space between them.
Reflection
Attention, made spatial.
Depersonalization brings creative coding, wearable inputs, and stage lighting into one encounter. It treats digital distraction as a subject for performance, giving an everyday experience a visible form through movement, waveforms, and light.