Abstract

Assignment Overview

The goal of this assignment was to create an audiovisual installation based on abstraction. The focus was on telling a story without text, relying only on visuals, sound, and physical objects. The installation had to combine both video and audio, and include at least one physical object that contributed to the concept.

Concept Idea

The idea comes from something I see often in my own environment: everyone moves through life at a different tempo.

Some people walk side by side for a while, then drift apart. Others suddenly align again after being out of sync. Sometimes someone races ahead, while someone else slows down. Sometimes a person gets stuck in tunnel vision, focused on their own path.

None of these tempos are wrong, they are simply different.This observation became the core of my installation. I wanted to show, through abstraction, that people naturally move at different speeds, just like elements in nature do.

Concept Explanation

To express this idea, I chose four natural objects that each have their own rhythm:

The Lighthouse

Steady, predictable, always turning at the same pace.
It represents people who move calmly, consistently, without rushing.

The Birds

Chaotic, fast, irregular.
They represent people whose tempo changes constantly, bursts of energy followed by drifting off.

The Sea

Deep, layered, endlessly shifting.
It moves in cycles that overlap or collide, just like emotional rhythms and phases in life.

The Boat

A rhythm that reacts to others. It follows the sea.

Together, these objects show that nature never moves in one synchronized pace. Everything has its own timing and yet everything coexists.

Just like people.

TouchDesigner 

To recreate these life tempos in an abstract way, I used LFOs in polyrhythmic ratios inside TouchDesigner.

Each object gets its own LFO with a slightly different speed.

This mirrors real life:

  • people walking together

  • people drifting apart

  • people falling out of sync

  • people reconnecting naturally

Mapping in MadMapper

I projected these rhythms onto physical objects, cups arranged in patterns inspired by sea and the lighthouse was an old heater. The projections warp across the surfaces, showing how rhythms overlap and influence each other.

Reflection

This project helped me express a personal idea through abstraction. The concept feels meaningful because it reflects how I see the world around me: people with different speeds, energies, and phases, all coexisting.

Technically, I learned a lot from using TouchDesigner and MadMapper together. However, I’m not fully satisfied with the result. With more time, I would have built stronger physical props and refined the mapping to push the concept further. The message is clear, but the execution still has room to grow.