Virtual Art Spaces: Melodies from the past

Melodies from the past

Maximilian Friedmann, David

Chapter 1

Our first decision in the course of Interactive Visualisation was probably the most important one: choosing the project which we found the most appealing. Daniel Grossmann could convince both of us through the concise explanation of the complex and highly emotional task of designing a space for the jewish austrian musician and componist Viktor Ullmann murdered in the KZ Theresienstadt. Giving him a room to explain his dynamic life before and in between the wars and make it understandable in a more personal way using the new technology of virtual reality glasses.

The two of us started independently, researching his life and thinking of possible formal languages we wanted to apply later on. Both of us had unique connections to the subject and different approaches we had to combine in order to collect fruitful concepts early on. Having very different images in mind, the first beginnings were, as often in these kind of projects, fairly bumpy. We made contact with other componists of the same origin and age, like Hans Krása and other artists of the antifascist Prague scene.

The research tought us historical happenings we weren‘t totally aware of in the first place. They might not have found their place in the end product, but shaped our primary ideas nonetheless. With that in mind, let us jump to the conceptual sketches and primary ideas. Prague Research

Chapter 2

Design

In this chapter we will go into the forms and spatial languages we found, while in the next we will emphasize on the storyboard. Both chapters will deal however with the concept as we planned it from early stages on. First conceptual sketches differ much from the solutions we inplemented later on: We started with a level design which was much more bound to real architecture and had less simplification or abstraction taking place. The concentration camp was to showing to much similarities with the original one and after the first critic we quickly dropped this idea. We wanted to establish a more respectful handling with the sites of systematic murder such as the concentration camp which we wanted to bring into our Laterproject.ideas were to abstract the image of the concentration camp to the theme of music. This is how the main character might have seen it in a fever dream. Everything would have been dominated by the focus on music, from architecture to flooring to possible clouds and so on. Apart from the problems he modeling process would bring to our project, we decided to drop this idea of strongly focusing it onto this only subject, as for every individual, his profession, his relation to music was only a part of his life. We didn‘t want to overstylize his life as a personification of music but give it different layers and emphasises.

However, we kept the idea of not showing to much and simplifying forms to give just enough information to the observer for him or her to understand the whole.

The first sketches show too many similarities to their original.

Second images shows a group of ghosts playing instruments in a cell.

Third image depicts the site of KZ Theresienstadt, a possible ‚level design‘.

The drawings which were bringing in a new abstract form of the concentration camp, however, not much more simple in their formal language. The first sketch would have been the main hub in early design stages.

Second sketch is showing the stylized form of the ghosts playing music in a cell.

Audio feedback based on spatial areas.A possible end scene could have been one of his last concerts in

Some ideas which we had at the beginning had to be dropped because of time management and lack of experience in the field: We intended on having ghosts inhabiting the levels which would give a musical feedback when you enter a certain zone. They were inspired at the ghost from Studio Ghibli and should look either a bit weird or as glowing halos emitting light and sound. They would play compositions depending on the scenery and the timeline to bring insight to the creations of Viktor Ullman along the way.

Also a last ‚neutral‘ level was planned at the beginning, where the player could read in peace the biography of Viktor Ullmann bundled in one place. We imagined it as a museum level, clean white walls and a focus on the texts and sheets. You could have looked down on the other worlds and see them from another perspective.

By this we hoped to make the scene feel more alive and engaging. Ultimately we had to scrap these two https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/9-fantastical-studio-ghibli-characters-from-japanese-folkloreideas.

Chapter 3

Story

As already mentioned, first ideas for the story and sketches around the storyboard were based on a main hub, where the player would return after each story room. Here he could have progressed in the story by unlocking more and more rooms. The final one teleporting him to a last instance, the so-called final space, the museum room already described.

We had problems figuring out why we need this main hub exactly apart from it being the central circulation space. Also, in terms of showing a bibliography, even if it was in a virtual space, it didn‘t make sense because a human life keeps on evolving, being itself the circulation space. It is everchanging and shouldn‘t come back to one point. Also by researching the life of Ullmann, we were surprised by how many lives he was living. Moving from one point to another we found it only fitting to have consecutive levels, representing different steps in his life.

We were influenced by books like La Peste and Zadig, with a main character mastering different adventures and evolving their character. Viktor Ullmann, being himself in a way a dramatic hero, progressed his character through very different stages of his life until reaching the apex and still, being able to make music on the very bottom of his existence, in the face of ultimate misery of the extermination camp. We reached out to the monomyth, a heroic narrative described by the psychologist Joseph Campbell, which we altered to make it fit the myth of Viktor Ullmann. In the end we had to choose 3 main steps of Ullmanns life, which were 1 Prague, 2 Stuttgart and 3 Theresienstadt. We were happy with this decision as the 3 were representing complete opposites in his journey and combined would make both, an exciting story board and good resumee at once.

How ment

Chapter 4

Modelling

The modelling of the three stages was a different experience compared to our normal workflow. The overall goal focused much more on the feeling we wanted to create rather than planing something functional. Our basic knowledge about real world sizes and human dimensions still helped to create a usable space. We chose Rhinoceros as our modelling platform because we were most familiar with it. Layouting the main scene dimensions with some basic cubes first, before creating any details, allowed to focus on the mood we wanted to achieve. Lightsources were placed next to highlight the important parts and get a better feeling on how to direct the visitor. The first sketches looked way more like real world situations, so we began abstracting the scene. The last step was to model all necessary details and have a good look over the file size and maximumthe mesh count. We decided to replace a few details with some from the unreal library to safe time.

aTeleport:simpleexplanation

Our spawn and teleport points were key aspects right from the start. The three levels should let you experience an abstract version of Ullmanns life by your own, so it was important to script the direction of the journey carefully and precise. The linear storytelling has much more in common with experiencing an interactive movie rather than an open world game. Exporting the files out of Rhino and into Unreal took a few tries till we had everything working. The mesh count had to be adjusted a few times and some meshes were not closed properly. When we jumped from Unreal to Mozilla we even realized that our mesh count was still way to high and we had to repeat the process of minimizing the scene size.

Chapter 5

Staging

Staging, as we first implemented it in Unreal Engine was taking the levels to a whole new level in terms of how they felt. The main difficulty we encountered were the limits of file size which we could import into Mozilla Spoke. To be exact, we could‘nt keep the size under 400 MB even after splitting the levels into separate files. The UE4 file counted 2 GB in the end, with tweaks in lighting, skyboxes, vegetation and textures. We became aware of the additional problems were were making and from this moment on, we focused on the converting process.

We played with different skyboxes, square and cube forms. The challenge was to include different skies in one world, as the levels were placed next to each other.

Lighting was the most important staging tool for our levels. Lights were bringing a strong feeling of nostalgy and calmnes to the scene.

In the last level, the spotlight brought a sensation of surveillance and discomfort to the player.

Chapter 6

TheConvertinglaststepofimporting

it all in Mozilla Hubs was taking us longer than expected. We didn‘t want to lose all the progress we made so we tried converting the original UE4 files and substracted more and more of those elements added in the staging process.

First lighting was cut, as it posed to be one of the biggest parts of the file and Spoke could do somewhat the same job. Still, we had massive files especially for the level 02. It turned out to be, on the one hand the skybox and the path leading up to the library. The books were also including higher poly counts but we wanted to keep them. We reduced the polycount of the stone path drastically and reduced a few textures. After thesechanges the file was down to 60 MB and ready to be imported.

The other levels were not as difficult as 02, however in 01 we had to delete most lights from withing the buildings and change the trees to low poly ones. A lot of textures, such as the curtain‘s had a high resolution which we compressed to mostly 1200px or less. Additionally, the water within the fountain on the square was removed. We also had a concert piano in the room adjacent to the square which was removed.

The level 03 was the easiest, as there was only one tree and no real skybox. However, again as for all some texture had to be compressed and the final result brought us down to 30MB which was perfect for Mozilla Spoke.

The end result are lacking a lot of atmosphere we were hoping to preserve. Maybe, in the future the ambiance of the former files can be restaured in a way that Spoke is accepting it.

The base form of the models imported into mozilla spoke. We still had to split the levels up as the file was to heavy for hubs to handle. The script for teleportation became obsolete and we could‘nt verify if it would have even worked in Mozilla Spoke.

End Product

First stop at the main square of level 01, Some water in the fountain would really help the picture.

Second stop, the entrance into the parc needs some lighting. Somehow it didn‘t convert that nicely. However the view to the library is great.

In the last level the lighting is great, but a fitting sky is missing. We would suggest a melancholic sunset, as one of Ullmanns last compositions are called Abendphantasie.

All in all we are happy about how it turned out. We saw the potential of building something even greater and hope that this booklet can help to optimize it.

Chapter

Daniel Grossmanns open minded and fresh personality really helped to make such a complex vision possible. He welcomed our ideas right from the start and enjoyed polishing them with us. We didn´t need many discussions so we only met twice and kept him updated via email and our miro board. He truly shared a similiar vision, which made the process much easier for us. Daniel taught us how to handle such a historically relevant and sensible topic with care without being restrictive. We had enough freedom to explore the new working method and even fail a few times. We enjoyed working with and for him and are looking forward to be part in his bigger vision.