Who Set the Sun Down in San Diego?

A story told in virtual reality

Who Set the Sun Down in San Diego? (wstsdisd?) began as a scholarship project and evolved into my Senior Project for the completion of my ICAM degree in June of 2023. Feel free to view the most recent writeup and demo of the project here.

The Gilman Scholarship Follow-on Service Project

To comemorate my completion of a Study Abroad Program in Barcelona, Spain during the Summer 2022, I've created a virtual space using A-frame and filled it with originally composed poetry, film, and audio from my trip. I had a lot of help in this process; I thank the following entities and collaborators for making this project possible:

Significance

While abroad, many of my insecurities regarding communicating in Spanish surfaced. I made a conscious effort every day to swallow my fear and take any opportunity that arose to speak, listen, read, or write in the language I have been studing on-and-off for 6 years. Through all this, I've learned it all came down to a decision I had the power to make in a moment. Would I listen to the voice in my head that wants me to stay small and afraid? Or, would I risk it for the biscuit and try out my language skills?

I learned that all it really boils down to is a decision, made in a single moment of presence. I mimic this choice in the virtual space, by giving you the choice between two versions of the short film: Spanish or English.

I composed the film from shots I recorded on my cell phone and edited together in Premiere Pro. This was my final project for a course I took at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). It's a compilation of moments and scenes from my travels in Barcelona and nearby parts of Spain.

The poem, which I wrote over the edited sequence of video, captures a lot of my inner workings and insecurities. I originally compsed this poem in English, and with help from Brianda, translated the poem to Spanish.

Lastly, the ambient audio heard in the virtual world is composed using a Pure Data patch and a field recording from a restaurant I ate at while abroad. The Pure Data patch, adapted from Andy Farnell's Designing Sound, synthesizes noise to mimic the sound of wind blowing through trees.

I chose to combine these two sounds in the virtual space because while I was studying in Spain, the two things I found myself doing most often were listening to the world around me as I walked, and dining with friends. The sound of the cityscape, in particular the noise of leaves blowing in the breeze, has a profoundly calming effect on me when I tune into it. These moments of peace counteracted the mental gymnastics that ordering at a restaurant could sometimes be, as I would challenge myself to order and speak with the waiter or waitress in Spanish. Thus, I felt mashing the sound of tree leaves with a recording from a busy restaurant in the virtual world best captured this dual nature of my experience abroad.