TS.2A – Tools Seminar
Unity Tutorial 
Faculty: José Stark Naya Lara, Noumena

OVERVIEW

The Interactive Environments Module explores the opportunities for interaction found in real time 3d game engines, specifically Unity. While these game engines have been developed as authoring platforms for 3d games, their ease of use opens up a broad range of opportunities for experimenting in new media. Over the course of three weeks, you will develop your own Interactive Environment where you can explore themes for your studio project or simply let your curiosity and creativity direct the content of your environment.

Maria Abou Meri’s prototype for a VR pairing with a cocktail during the Augmented Gastronomy Workshop, MAI students, by IAAC

BRIEF: Virtual FoodPairing

The mediums by which we can experiencealternate realities have changed in relation to technology. From the campfire story, through books, film, and now virtual and augmented reality technology, the concept is the same, allow our minds to flow into a reality where different rules govern the consequences.
As the technology gets closer and closer to our bodies, the experiences get more and more intimate and more and more invasive of our senses in order to suspend us in fiction. Virtual Reality completely removes our visually experienced reality and replaces it with an alternate visual spectrum. At the same time, the rest of our senses remain outside of this alternate reality. While there are some attempts to immerse more of our senses in a virtual world (using Leap Motion controllers to add natural gestures, haptic feedback to feel virtual objects, etc) we propose that the Interactive Environment should serve to augment our senses which are left outside: taste, smell, and touch.
At the end of the Interactive Environments you will produce a VR experience with the HTC Vive and Unity to serve as a ‘foodpairing’ to something we eat, drink, or smell.