Discover the Project
What is it about?
This project focuses on the development of a transmedia digital book that brings together narrative, technology, and community knowledge to tell the story of Emilia, a teenager who travels to San Basilio de Palenque after losing her parents in a fire caused by unsafe household energy practices.
Objective
The initiative aims not only to reconstruct the protagonist’s identity through her connection to her family’s Afro-Indigenous roots, but also to promote a critical understanding of electrical risks from a culturally grounded perspective. To achieve this, the project incorporated a qualitative research and co-creation process with the Palenquero community, which included field visits to validate narrative, aesthetic, and symbolic elements from the local worldview. The team conducted interviews with primary sources, exploratory workshops, community walks, and on-site sound recordings used for musical composition and multimedia design.
Process
Creation of the Work
The development of the interactive piece began with the intention of creating a tangible board that would allow users to discover narrative fragments not included in the original digital book, specifically, the events of the fire that motivated Emilia’s first trip to San Basilio de Palenque.
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Conceived as a narrative prequel, this piece offers three different perspectives on the event, articulated through characters and physical objects that, when placed on the board’s surface, activate scenes, memories, and technical explanations.
Scriptwriting:
The creative process began with the drafting of a detailed script that established the interaction flow between tokens, characters, and narrative sequences. Based on this script, a storyboard was created to define each animation, visual transition, and illustration, ensuring aesthetic coherence with La Chispa de Emilia’s visual universe.
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Construction of the interactive table:
Designed as a modular, fully assemblable system, the device consists of a rectangular prism with a frosted acrylic top surface, beneath which a backlighting matrix brings the board to life. Inside the prism, a camera is positioned facing the surface, responsible for identifying the objects placed by users.
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Technical system:
The system is based on reacTIVision, an open-source computer vision framework that enables fast and robust tracking of fiducial markers attached to physical objects. Each token was programmed in Processing, allowing specific interactions between characters and narrative elements based on the codes detected by the camera.
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Physical objects:
The pieces were digitally modeled using parametric software, 3D-printed in PLA, and then hand-painted to preserve the original artistic intent. The stories activated by each character reconstruct possible scenarios from the day of the fire through animations created in After Effects, revealing not only emotional dimensions but also evidence of unsafe household energy practices.
Equipment
Paola Harris
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