The Tether | Metaverse

THE TETHER ALEKYA MALLADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

INSTRUCTOR: NATHAN SU METAVERSE UCLA - AUD ENTERTAINMENT STUDIO

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ENVIRONMENT METAPHOR: THE LABYRINTH INTERNET CONDITION: ECHO CHAMBERS

THE TETHER ALEKYA MALLADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

In a land increasingly inhabited by repeated communications and amplified beliefs, where alternative ideas are not considered, lies this monumental tower that represents ground truth. It is at the target of the city, around which everything is organized. The ones closer to the tower are the purveyors of the “first claims�. They are trying to establish proximity to the reality of events by trying to get there first and communicate the truth as it is. Threads that originate from the truth spiral down further away into what becomes a maze of fabricated information. The city feeds on this information but slowly deteriorates into chaos.

As we navigate through this maze, in an attempt to trace the origin of these threads, more information poses as obstacles, pushing us further away from the center and the path becomes more confusing and convoluted. Added sociopolitical beliefs, confirmation bias and discrimination make it almost impossible to reach the truth.

We always seem to be approaching it but never actually getting closer. So, In a world filled with subjective reality, what becomes the truth?

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Concept Art: The Tether The city surrounds the tower, a beacon of truth where informationpasses through the threads, becoming more convoluted and confusing.

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THE LABYRINTH

Maze Runner: The Death Cure Source: moviemania.io

ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth was an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by Daedalus to house the monster, the Minotaur. It was famous for being unnavigable; once in, anyone who entered was doomed to be eaten by the Minotaur.

Theaseus used ariadne’s ball of red thread to navigate through the labyrinth, kill him and make his way back to the entrance. Today, internet threads disseminate information in a similar way. For instance, reddit threads have a sequence of information that gets more confusing as more information is added to them.

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Theseus used a thread to navigate through the Labyrinth. The thread becomes essential as it is the only thing that can provide a way out. The center is called the “home of the monster, based on this mythology.

A labyrinth has a single through-route with twists and turns but without branches. The paths always seem to be leading us to the center but always pushing us away. Though they are unicursal, with only one exit and one entrance, they are meant to be difficult to navigate.

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Bottom: The Problem is Not the Problem Source: Robyn Wolf https://www.robynwolf.com/single-post/2018/08/04/TheProblem-is-Not-the-Problem

Top (Right): Labyrinth Source: Jean-François Liesenborghs https://in.pinterest.com/pin/426293920953305947/

Top (Left): The Minotaur Source: Jim Tierney inprnt.com

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ECHO CHAMBERS

Nexus Print Portfolio: Echo Chambers Source: Tyrell Cannon, Feb 28, 2019 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1619738205/nexus-print-portfolio-echo-chambers

ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

Echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation by which people are able to seek out information that reinforces their existing views, potentially as an unconscious exercise of confirmation bias. This effect occurs online due to a harmonious group of people amalgamating and developing tunnel vision.

Many social media platforms like google, facebook or instagram are already feeding us with what they think we want to see. Our screens are becoming a one-way mirror, reflecting our interests and reinforcing our prejudices. The internet no longer seems a free, independent space. It feels like it is commercially controlled and is becoming more personalised.

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Echo Chamber: We Only Hear What We Want To Hear Source: Erlangga Firdaus, DEc 02, 2019. https://medium.com/@erlanggafirdaus/echo-chamber-weonly-hear-what-we-want-to-hear-7332dfc39ccf

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

2ND BEST HIGH OF UE4

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Information is disseminated through socio-cultural bias, prejudice, misinformation, personal beliefs, etc. By the time it reaches an individual, it becomes an inescapable labyrinth that becomes extremely complicated to navigate through. As we are set on a journey to find the ground truth and progress from the chaos of corrupted data, we face the obstacles of socio political beliefs. As the journey progresses through the threads of information that connect to the center, we start approaching the truth. But, like in a labyrinth, we always approach this center but never actually reach it.

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H RES RENDER MODEL

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Top (Left): Motherboard Sources: Asus Sabertooth Z170 S

DATA

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Top( Right): Micro-SD expansion slot Sources: Evan-Amos

CROPPED IMAGE FROM YOUR KIT VISUAL REFERENCES

Bottom(Left): Server racks Sources: Calvin Messinger

The references range from objects which store, transfer, connect and transmit data. The kits range from micro scale objects like a microchip to sizeable objects like a data transmitter. Some of the kit pieces are an abstraction of different objects forming the same function.

Bottom( Left): The top of a cell phone tower Sources: Getty Images

ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

CROPPED IMAGE FROM YOUR KIT VISUAL REFERENCES

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whutevs Source - Robert Sundelin https://www.instagram.com/p/BPBC5beDv-G/

THE BEST HIGH RES (SUPER COMPELLING) REFERENCE IMAGE FROM YOUR KIT THEME VISUAL REFERENCES THAT SUMS UP THE VISUAL LANGUAGE OF YOUR KITBASH KITS.

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

YOUR 2ND BEST KITPIECE

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YOUR BEST KITPIECE

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

MODELLING The kits were modelled using hard surface poly modelling methods of extruding surfaces, bridging and bevelling to get smoother edges. However, the biggest challenge was cutting an object that has been extruded from a spline. This limited our options to edit the shape, like cutting, bevelling or extruding from the surfaces of the object. Making individual pieces of a kit helped us get better control of the kit rather than extruding the surfaces of a basic object or an object derived from a spline.

Though this made the file heavy, connecting and deleting the objects later helped us get cleaner and low poly kits.

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The Tether The kit pieces were used to populate the environment.

The tower at the center is connected to the debris through the purple tether.

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Kitpiece Name The UV unwrapping was done in the Cinema4D UV-Edit tab and then selecting all the surfaces.

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SCREENSHOT OF C4D MODELLING (CONCEPT ART) IN PROGRESS

SCREENSHOT OF C4D UV UNWRAPPING FOR KITS

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

LIGHTING The first stage was a conceptual interpretation of the environmental metaphor where the digital labyrinth was composed to lead to a tower at a distance. The tunnel view represents the effect of the echo chambers. The light through the punctures represents more information getting added to the existing prejudice.

A combination of the two is the resulting previsualization of a central tower with a spiral around it, disappearing into the city like labyrinth. Here the point of view is from a human perspective. The light on the tower draws attention to it, successfully marking its significance. The dark foreground also symbolizes the information getting corrupted and leading to confusion. Also, we observed that the warmer colors draw more attention than the point of focus than cooler colors. However, this composition proved it difficult to represent the complexity of a labyrinth and establish the layout of the city disseminating into chaos from the tower of truth.

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LIGHTING TESTS OR EARLY CONCEPT ART VERSION, IF YOU DON’T HAVE FOUR, REFORMAT PAGE APPROPRIATELY

LIGHTING TESTS OR EARLY CONCEPT ART VERSION, IF YOU DON’T HAVE FOUR, REFORMAT PAGE APPROPRIATELY

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LIGHTING TESTS OR EARLY CONCEPT ART VERSION, IF YOU DON’T HAVE FOUR, REFORMAT PAGE APPROPRIATELY

LIGHTING TESTS OR EARLY CONCEPT ART VERSION, IF YOU DON’T HAVE FOUR, REFORMAT PAGE APPROPRIATELY

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

BEST HIGH RE UE4 M

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ES RENDER OF MODEL

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QR CODE LINK TO FILM

REALTIME

ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

The scenes are in an order of progression; chaos, confusion and contemplation. Although the models are fairly linear, the experience was aimed to create tension and evoke excitement as we progress. The aesthetic evolved from the concept art into a realm of digitalization to make it apparent the broadcast of data and its culmination into conceptual reality.

The navigation through the space in real time is fluid but fast paced, camera moves and lighting were challenging, when compared to a still image. It was important to avoid the glare of emissive objects and at the same time highlight the details and intricacies within a scene.

Adopting real-time techniques in the realm of entertainment and architecture will allow us to extract more creative value from a given effort, better design, polished output, flexibility and (of course) ease in render time.

SOUND

As we navigate the labyrinth towards the tower, the sound transforms from inaudible chatter, multiple news channel reports to more audible news report.

As we near the tower, we hear it more clearly, but we stop to contemplate if it actually is true or not. This is aided by a foreground music with an intention to create rising suspense and tension.

Include sound sources here: Youtube All sounds, Fast News sound effect.

Social Media Echo Chambers Trap, Newsy.

Cinematic suspense rising #2, Sound effects factory.

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Level Creation of the labyrinth This model is a segment of the labyrinth when we reach a reach a crossroad and the tower appears closer

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What the surfaces are made of The model is put together by using the kit pieces that depict data and technology.

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SCREENSHOT OF UE4 LEVEL CREATION (BIG PICTURE)

SCREENSHOT OF UE4 LEVEL CREATION (AN INTERESTING DETAIL)

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The Tether 00:00:10

FINAL FILM (STILL 1) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

FINAL FILM (STILL 3) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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FINAL FILM (STILL 2) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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FINAL FILM (STILL 4) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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FINAL FILM (STILL 5) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

FINAL FILM (STILL 7) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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The Tether 00:00:48

FINAL FILM (STILL 6) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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The Tether 00:01:00

FINAL FILM (STILL 8) - USE THESE ALMOST LIKE A STORYBOARD

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As we realized the fantastical and weird idiosyncrasies of social media and content on the internet, we seeked to find a reality which is more real and an extension of our imagination. We converged data into objects and space to change the way we perceive ourselves, the social media and the information that is being fed to us. ‘The Tether’ helped us spatially visualize the shackles of this existing phenomena.

Similar to what we witnessed happening on r/place, we noticed a similar phenomena take place in echo chambers where there is an increasing sense of territorial being. The composition and lighting tests made us realize the simulacrum, replacing the reality of the internet condition and the labyrinth with a representation of its breakdown into dissemination of information and data. We aimed to create an immersive environment which would take us through a journey in the search of ground truth through information threads, similar to that of internet threads, against the barriers of corrupted data.

ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

We are marching towards a virtual world, our reality becomes a mix of virtual, augmented and mixed reality as depicted in the book and movie Ready Player One. Virtual reality games and environments are becoming new frontiers for visualization and technological innovations. The idea of shared virtual worlds is the ‘new entertainment’ and as designers we have the opportunity to be trailblazers of creating hyper real environments that substitute the signs of real for the real.

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ALEKYA MALL ADI | AISHWARYA RAJASEKAR

WHEN PIXELS COLLIDE The reading is a celebration of how Art was brought to life as a worldwide phenomenon. At its core, the story of r/Place is about the three forces that humanity needs to make art, creation, and technology possible. It walks us through the evolution of a blank canvas of 1000 x 1000 pixels called the reddit “Place” into a collaborative masterpiece. People from all over the world form groups, applied different strategies and had internet wars to claim these pixels. What started as the creators’ inability to protect themselves while creating art, evolved into an organizational hierarchy like a workplace. The first ‘creators’ made phallic fantasies which offended some people and gave rise to the category of “protectors”. Their art wasn’t considered immaturity but a fundamental complexity of the creative process itself. Its research is an insight into the concept that too much freedom also leads to chaos and uncertainty. We also witness the protectors turning into dictators of fashion, as they start gaining more followers and power over the place. They started defining styles and forcing the creators to implement their ideas, thus controlling their creative sensibilities, in a way suppressing them.

People started attacking others by emotional appeals, battle plans and socio-political situations. They started to spread over the colored corners, red and blue, and tried to occupy the board.

Followers picked a color and occupied pixels without any kind of direction. Some groups applied different strategies around this and made claims of efficiency. In conclusion, this creation of territories led to the segregation of people and the politics and biases of real life started getting reflected in their creations. The r/Place became a lesson for conflict management. Hence, we can deduce that creativity needs constraints as much as it needs freedom.

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When Pixels Collide (Pages 13-15) Source - sudoscript.com/reddit-place/

ONE PAGE EXCERPT FROM THE READING YOU WERE ASSIGNED TO LEAD

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