Logos Pathos Ethos (L.P.E)

Inspiration

We wanted to create a new way to used transmedia augmented reality to show people the complexities of the stories reflected in data sets. The name, Logos, Pathos, Ethos, refers to the motivations by which people make decisions. Our ideas were driven by a desire to visualize the narrative of our team lead's life experiences as one of the one out of every 240 kids who graduate from a four year college from his neighborhood in Detroit. As artists, directors, designers, and developers from a variety of backgrounds, we wanted to create an artistic performance that utilized the magic and presence of augmented reality whose concept could be applied to all different kinds of performances.

What it does

Our experience is a staged musical performance that mixes spoken word/slam poetry, vocal performance, and dance. The user is brought into a field of 239 people holding color coded balloons. A performer holding a balloon dances and performs I Dreamed a Dream from Les Miserables, at first as a spoken word piece interwoven with personal stories of peers growing up in Detroit, then in song as the music grows, dodging AR wrecking balls that, section by section, take out the 239 others through prison, teen pregnancy, and other visualized statistics. At the end of the piece, the performer writes his dream on his balloon and hands it to the viewer, leaving them to explore the dreams

How we built it

We built our characters in Fuse (Adobe CC) and then imported them into Mixamo. The animations were developed in Unity and we decided to use the Magic Leap one in order to combine a live performance with the data visualization and storytelling that was happening in the "virtual world".

Challenges we ran into

We spent too much time in the planning phase of the project and defining details that we were not able to complete at the end of the experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to combine data visualization with storytelling in order to provide the user with an easier way to understand the data in a more personal way.

What we learned

Live performing needs to be tested and practiced in order to match our expectations, also we learned the importance of prioritizing the desired features in order to complete a proof of concept.