Oasis

This project was my final project for my New Media BFA degree at Rochester Insitute of Technology. The goal was to create an interactive exhibit to be displayed at the schools yearly Imagine RIT creativity fair. But due to current events it was canceled and our team pivoted to create a more digitally centered experience.

Oasis is a meditation experienced that is personalized towards its user and provides a relaxing and engaging experience to help relieve stress. Through the use of a respiration belt to paint on a canvas users can see their breathing meditation come to life. Since we had to move to a digital platform the belt has been removed from the equation and an artificial breathing method has been implemented.

I highly recommend checking out the website as it has links to the application, and a more in-depth discussion on our solution.

Process and Demo

https://oasis.cad.rit.edu/

Link to Code

https://github.com/HurleyAndrew/OasisOnePager

Behind The Scenes

This project had a few main components. A belt that measured breathing, a wall that was interactive, and an application and website to display this breathing data and either information to aid in our user's journey. We used Javascript, HTML/CSS, OpenProcessing, p5JS, Arduinos, pressure sensors, and version 2 of the Kinect. p5JS and OpenProcessing were used to create graphics based on the data coming from the Arduino and respiration belt.

Additional Thoughts / Feelings / Stories

Sadly we could not show off the engineering behind the respiration belt. We hope one day we are able to let others experience our installation the way it was meant to be. It was challenging to come up with everything from scratch. Noone on the team was an engineer and commercial breathing belts retail at >$100 so we had to do some serious thinking to get our own belt working. We do however hope the digital experience is found to be relaxing and enjoyable for those who try it out.