In the American Journal of Psychology, Lawrence E. Marks discussed how lights and color psychologically correspond to music or sound; one of them is that the visual experience interprets the dimensions of auditory experience by its quality and intensity. Where visual relates to hue, auditory connects with pitch. A result of research by Simpson, Quill, and Ausubel (1956) stated that children systematically associate higher pitch with a hue like yellow and less likely blue. For this project, EXHILIRATING and SERENE will be the focus adjective. Exhilarating relates to excitement and joy, using warm colors like red, yellow, and orange (Babolhavaeji et al., 2015). Serene is usually parallel with calm, peaceful, and relaxed. Maden et al. (2000) investigated how several colors have similar and dissimilar meanings in 8 different countries, where all these countries agreed that green, white, and blue equate with "calming," "peaceful," and "gentle." 

Exhilarating

Exhilarating is the adjective that focuses on making light and sound using Pharos. Several inspirations are taken from artists who create artwork or light installations that use vibrant and warm colors to create an exhilarating sensory experience or emotions; one of them is the infinity mirrors by Yayoi Kusuma's lightwork, which uses vibrant colors and unique patterns and objects to reflect the lights to the mirror in the ceiling, creating a warm yet joyful environment. Using a mirror also allows her to surpass her physical limitation of creativity. 

Serene

With this adjective, a video and sound can convey calmness and peace. The main genre of music that suits this adjective will be classical music, which generates calmness yet elegance. James Turrell's artwork is an example that ideally uses soft colors such as blue, purple, and pink to represent the calmness and uniqueness of incorporating natural lights through opening ceilings. 

Technically, Pharos, Premiere Pro, and After Effects are the leading software for the projects. Pharos is a lighting controller and software that quickly displays and controls lights using the chosen colors. This project will be presented at the Capitol Theatre to radiate exhilarating emotion with the chosen sound (video game music). 

For several graphics, After Effects is an excellent software for making graphics and eccentric effects, which will be used in the video to describe the ideas best.

As stated by Sievers et al. (2019), Arousal is the dimension that shapes our behavior through the emotional experience we face. Sighing means dissatisfaction, jumping means joy, crying means sad, and many more actions that most humans do to "represent" their emotions. Humans' emotional responses are usually based on how they perceive the environment. Turley and Milliman (2000) mentioned, "Sensory input from our environment plays an important role in how we feel and behave." Thus, the observers may have a specific reaction when they are exposed to specific smells, the luminosity of lights and colors, and the loudness of noises as well. 

One multisensory experience I would like to highlight for this week is an immersive project run by 24 an old producer named Stephanie Singer. In the video above, she tried to make the audience "taste" the music by activating our smell, tastebuds, and touch senses. Stephanie and her team are trying to figure out how sensory stimulation can strengthen the experience through classical music and to know if it is possible to escalate an experience of other senses just by activating one sense and how. She is inspired by a neurological condition called synaesthesia. Asher et al. (2006) define synaesthesia as a condition that merges one sense with another, creating an unusual sensory experience (for example, sound evokes color).

This week, the main focus was on Pharos since it is an unfamiliar software for this project. After some research about Pharos, the goal of the system itself is to "provide high positioning accuracy in a low(zero)-cost and easy-to-use fashion." (Hu et al., 2013, p1). Pharos leverages existing lighting systems for localization, allowing it to be gradually implemented without needing a centralized database. It is designed for easy setup, enabling devices like smartphones to determine their location with minimal interaction by passively listening to the lighting infrastructure. The system provides high accuracy and precision in localization.

Furthermore, I will use less bright colors because the room at Capitol is rather dark, so I don't want to make it too bright. I've made a timeline for assignment 2, which helps me be more organized and know which one to prioritize first. For the next three weeks, I will be focusing on Pharos. 

For this week's research, I focused more on researching the journals and academic experts that can support my ideas and the ones that helped me explore the chosen words for this project. For exhilaration, I did some research on color psychology in video games. I noticed that different video games have different primary color palettes that determine the mood and emotion they want the player to feel when playing. Roohi, S. & Forouzandeh, A. (2019) investigated if color grading principles in video games can increase the player's immersion experience. They found out that it also affects their performances and behavior. 

As for Serene, I also researched audiovisual and color grading in films and videos. Since I changed my idea for Serene, I explored how looking and listening to nature's images and sounds can lessen stress on a person and how looking at nature can give a serene emotion. One journal I would like to highlight is Naef A. C. et al. (2022) research, which compared the effect of audiovisual, visual-only, and audio-only on people's heart rates and emotions. 

One artwork I found this week was Anyma, a solo project by Matteo Milleri. This project combines melodic-techno music with innovative visuals, creating immersive performances. What I would like to point out from this project is how he uses laser lights that are synchronized with the music, creating dynamic visual effects. This also enhances the emotional impact of the music, creating a connection between the artist and the audience. 

For this week's research, I tried to focus more on my ideas for the Pharos project and the colors I wanted to use to apply "exhilarating" to the lights and support the sound. In a book called "Applications of Evolutionary Computation," there is a chapter called "Recomposing the Pokemon Color Palette," where they explain how the design principles of colors of non-player characters are made to inform and guide game designers in creating new Pokemon and to predict the type of unseen Pokemon sprites. Although most of the research is about the data of Pokemon, there is a small section of it where they explained how the choice of colors could help us to identify specific elements of non-player characters, such as water, fire, etc., or represent the exact type, like fighting or psychic. This research helps me to choose which colors most Pokemons have, which, from what I see, are mostly yellow, red, and blue. Therefore, I would like to implement these colors into the lights to represent those "non-player characters."

I found this interactive light and sound work by Knichel, B., & Reckter, H (2014) called "Resonate." This piece is interesting since they used elastic strings as a medium to link the objects and make them interactive. A base sound represents the ship's body, followed by several sounds in each object. Visitors can use the strings to "communicate" with each other, resulting in sounds and lights that appear in the middle of the strings. I want to focus on how the lights are synchronized or support the sound since this is how I plan my project. Although hitting all the beats or parts of the soundtrack is too complicated, I wish to successfully showcase several crucial parts of the soundtrack nicely through the lights. 

Moreover, the lights that I envisioned to be bold-bright turned out pastel when I viewed them in the Capitol. I set the wrong intensity and several settings, leading to this outcome. However, I am committed to resolving these issues in the coming week before completing the entire project. Darrin's suggestion to work on both assignments simultaneously was also noted, and I plan to start the second project next week. 

After the feedback on my draft for the Pharos project, I tried to research more about the connections of colors and emotions, what kinds of colors, and how the two can connect. Wilms, L., & Oberfeld, D. (2018) explained that the emotional effect of colors is not mainly focused on their hues but also significantly influenced by cooperating saturation and brightness. As I read through the research, I tried to implement saturation for my project, where I needed to make the lights highly saturated to create a sense of excitement and energy. Additionally, warm hues like red and orange are usually associated with higher arousal. In this case, I plan to minimize the range of the color palette and boost out the primary colors more. 

Pulse Spiral by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is a three-dimensional installation manufactured using 400 lightbulbs. This piece can detect and respond to a person's heart rate using a sensor underneath. This piece is exciting and does stand more mesmerizing. However, I want to point out how the lights glow synchronously with the heartbeat and rate using a sensor under the 3D model. To correlate with my project, I want to showcase the lights according to the beats on the soundtrack by focusing on tightening the timeline and making the beats as synchronized with the lights as possible. 

This week, I focused more on researching serenity and what kind of visuals I needed to capture the serenity I wanted. A book called "Passionate Views: Film, cognition, and Emotion" explores the emotions in cinema movies, elaborating on the connections between genre and emotion and also how the use of narrative, music, and cinema techniques can evoke emotions. Although the book does not explicitly mention serene emotions that can be achieved when making a film, and my idea and focus for this project do link with cinema movies, I can take some points such as cinematography, the king of the cuts, and the color palette for the video. For now, I wanted soft-muted colors like green and blue since they can evoke calmness and serenity (Li, H et al., 2022). 

For my second project, I had several shots in hand and started to merge the clips and color-grade the videos. Although I still need more shots, I will also focus on the color grading and figure out how to evoke that serene feeling through the video. I shot some scenes that I felt could have the feeling of calmness. However, I will try to get feedback next week and hope to finish at least getting all the clips together by next week. 

• Saad, S., Mahmoudi, S., & Manneback, P. (2012). Semantic analysis of human movements in videos. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Semantic Systems, 141–148. https://doi.org/10.1145/2362499.2362519

• Ulrich, R. S., Simons, R. F., Losito, B. D., Fiorito, E., Miles, M. A., & Zelson, M. (1991). Stress recovery during exposure to natural and urban environments. Journal of environmental psychology, 11(3), 201-230.

This is the progress for my Pharos. I haven't made much change to it since I focused more on my second project. However, I did try to change a bit for some sections and also tried to focus on the colors used. There are still some parts that I didn't like, and I will tweak more before the milestone presentation next week. I'm still trying to find sounds that can suit the last 30-second parts, but I already have some ideas on what kind to add. I'm thinking of adding a broken game sound or a sound that says "u win," or "u lose," or maybe "the game that you played is over." I probably will use the sound of Google or will try to use AI for that.

For the video, I combined all the shots I've taken before and tried to do some cuts that follow the song's beat. I added some effects to the video, which made it look dreamy, and I also added an effect on the intro for the title, which made it look like the words came out from the train. I still need more shots since this video only took 1 minute, so I need to find more places to evoke that serenity, such as running water, gentle breezes, or rustling leaves. I also did some color grading to make it look calmer by using cooler tones. 

For the last part of Pharos, I added some sounds like glass breaking, broken computer sound effect, and "game over" sound. I wanted the sound to be very random and ended up by a bot saying game over as if the audience are playing games and at the end the game is done.

I had a couple more shots for the serene project and added some transitions between clips. I toned down the dreamy effect a bit because it's too blurry. I cropped the sound by a few seconds in case it's too long and to aim at serenity, not boredom.