Gaia
Interaction Designer, Software Engineer
2008
Description
Gaia is a virtual community garden where participants plant musical seeds that sprout into colourful, sound-emitting plants. The Gaia world is split into four quadrants. Each quadrant represents a unique combination of realistic vs. abstract and light vs. dark aesthetics. In addition, each quadrant has its own set of musical seeds, broken down into bass, beat, and melody sounds. By planting specific seeds at specific locations, participants create their own distinctive aural/visual experience.
Gaia was developed by an interdisciplinary team of 7 as part of the Building Virtual Worlds course at the Great Northern Way Campus.
Participants control the garden keeper.
Roles and Responsibilities
I worked as the principal interaction designer and software engineer. I created the initial concept for a virtual community garden, and worked with the team to develop the concept further into a musical garden. With the concept in place, I designed and implemented actions for movement, planting seeds, and digging up existing plants.
Planting seeds in different quadrants yields drastically different results.
Technologies
Gaia was built on top of the Great Northern World codebase -- a virtual world toolkit written in Java.
Downloads
Gaia can be used to dynamically compose your own music. See below for a sample song created using Gaia:
See Also
Please check out the following related resources: