Earlier this year, in the middle of my midterms during my second semester, I was diagnosed with Sensorineural Hearing Loss. It was (and still is) unknown as to how it will develop, or if it will get worse- but I was told the loss I had already sustained was permanent. I was in classes and a major that based itself around sound. Interactive media and art was never complete without musical elements for me. Thus, I had to find a different way to compose and integrate music into my projects. I’m also a super-fan of mushrooms! This created the inspiration for my musical instrument powered by ASL, “Mushies”. Mushies uses notes C-A on the major scale using Tone.js, and correlates it with a mushroom. This mushroom is triggered to “sing” his song, when you sign the letter for the corresponding note according to the ASL alphabet. I coded this using a teachable machine, and hand pose.js. For example, when signing “C”, the C4 note will play. 


Mushies 

Code: https://editor.p5js.org/slr556/present/LU1eJ_YHu

     My project stretches across a multitude of mediums, as I showed my coding/design skills, my artistic skills, and my ability to pull meaningful art from myself. I coded, designed and storyboarded my own Role Play Game based on living with Bipolar Depression. It is programmed through p5.js, and currently has 688 lines of code. I have struggled through depression all my life, but was officially diagnosed with BPD my sophomore year of high school. I felt extremely isolated in my experience, because it felt like simple tasks like brushing my teeth, making food or going to school were mini adventures- each one taking a chunk of life out of me. My motivation to do anything or to have a successful day felt completely out of my control- meanwhile my classmates were able to self-motivate and not bounce around between two extremes. I wanted to create an RPG that wasn’t really an RPG, because you’re not given much of a choice. You as the player may want to open your windows or get out of bed- but you are limited by your depression or mania. Whether you will have a manic or depressive day is completely out of your control as I programmed the code to pick your day randomly. I also wanted to subtly characterize the depression/mania through my text. In the manic version of my game, words and phrases might repeat. In the depressive version, sentences are shortand  disconnected. 


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Sasha Lynn Roberts

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