https://youtube.com/shorts/2_YN2WV5eqI?si=oyOorkKVGtlRsgBh
While cooking up ideas for this project, I distinctly remember a series of fun coincidental friend spottings that occurred earlier that day.
First was when I was waiting for my Take Eat Easy order in the Esh lobby; my friend, who I haven’t seen since FALL, just so happened to also order at the same time (and the exact same thing!). We happened to make eye contact at the counter and the way we both gasped and immediately brightened was so wholesome.
Later that night, I was on the 7 bus home from dance practice, instead of walking my normal route. Someone entered the bus and sat down near me and kept stealing glances at me; I remember thinking they looked vaguely familiar. Turns out, they were a mutual of the aforementioned Esh friend! Previously, they existed as but a concept through the stories my friend told me; it was the first time we met in person and it was a great time :)
All this to say that interactions with people are coincidences resulting from a series of small micro-choices you make everyday. For this generative art project, I wanted to explore this idea, while also using cool p5.js features like hand-tracking and AR!
~ Serena Yung
Mockup
Code: View here
While the vision isn’t coming together like I had hoped (without spending ungodly hours debugging), I’m proud of myself for figuring out and incorporating the hand-tracking AR aspect into a conceptual design that I think speaks to my message!
In the future, I would love to see this grow into a sort of digital film strip, and you can select any screen to peek into it and review the memories laying there. It might also be cool to go down a storytelling game route, where scenarios unfold depending on the series of choices you make!
Shout out to these sources for helping provide the documentation for me to start -