A bit about A Storm of Voices

Here is the link to the project website to learn more: https://projects.etc.cmu.edu/curtain-call/

Me and my team worked to create A Storm of Voices

An interactive lobby installation for the CMU school of Drama’s production of Lear, an avant garde play that mashes up King Lear and Sesame street to explore themes of loss, grief, creativity, and family.

We used directional speakers, UV lighting, and a bunch of set decoration to create a storm of voices that bombarded guests with the whispered voices of the show’s characters airing out their guilt. 

I did the experience design, the writing, voice directing, audio engineering, engineered the sequencing and show system, and did the tech for the lighting. 

This was an experience that really tested my design sensibilities.

When you mostly design in a medium like games, it is hard to tell when you are getting by on good design process and principles, and when your familiarity with the medium is letting you just work through it based on intuition. Because I was designing for a location based experience I could not rely on what I had already done, I had to test everything and make sure what I thought was right actually was because I had no frame of reference for what actually worked. And because of the difficulty of getting a whole live audience going to see a show to test with we had to be really clever about how we tested each piece of the installation to ensure it worked.

It was also an experience with working with another team to execute their vision. We were working with the company putting on the show, and we were just there to support them, so we had to make sure that we delivered on what they wanted while also creating an experience the audience would love in a short 13 week development time.

I also try to learn a new skill on each project I do. In this case it was working to develop our own directional speakers to use in the installation so we can keep under budget, and it was learning audio engineering and sequencing in order to run the installation.

Here is a our trailer for the show: