Mystical Lab is a reactive finger labyrinth that plays different pieces of music when your fingers strolls through its different quadrants and areas. A labyrinth is a meandering path, with a single path leading from the entrance to a center.
Labyrinths are an ancient archetype pattern dating back 4,000 years or more, generally used for walking meditation or ceremonies, evoking metaphor, sacred geometry, spiritual pilgrimage, religious practice, mindfulness, environmental art, and community building. You enter a labyrinth from its entrance and by walking the path to the center. All labyrinths have only one path in to the center and the same path out. You can stay in the center for as long as you wish and when you are ready to leave, walk the same path back to the entrance/exit. A finger labyrinth is similar to a full sized labyrinth but it is smaller and traversed with a finger as opposed to being walked. The user traces the path from the starting point to the centre using a finger and then traces the path back from the center back to the starting point.
In the Mystical Lab, when the user touches the first sensor at the entrance of the labyrinth, the introductory music starts. As the user moves forward in the labyrinth and touches different sensors on the labyrinth, different music is played. Each touch sensor is associated with a specific piece of music that is played until the next touch sensor is touched. This continues until the center of the labyrinth is reached. The user will then traverse back to the entrance of the labyrinth and when the touch sensor at the “entrance/exit” is touched again the music stops.
Connecting the MPR121 to the outside world | creating touch points for the different areas | Color makes a difference (or does it?) |
Videos and Source Code
- Experience Video (45 seconds) https://youtu.be/jK9iWr5Ev7Y
- Github Source code https://github.com/n00shinm/MysticalLab
Circuit Diagram
Mystical Lab Circuit Diagram
References
The Labyrinth Society, https://labyrinthsociety.org/about-labyrinths
Walking a Labyrinth, Veriditas, https://www.veriditas.org/New-to-the-Labyrinth
What would I do next:
- re-make the labyrinth surface, maybe even carve it in wood and make the sensors’ surface smoother
- create images in the circles that are being drawn on the screen