Virtuoso
Virtuoso is the first episode of a cartoon series that I created named Rabbit Hole. This page includes the first 16 page storyboard followed by the origin story of how this creative project came to be. The Rabbit Hole series are cartoons that are inspired by psychedelic and transcendental experiences. In brief that’s how it happened, in 2015 I had finished a UX Design project for wearable payments. The following year I then went to work with a small London base start up named Flicktek near London Bridge, and they were building an early wearable for computer use, of which I wasn’t a huge fan because it seemed rather limited. However I then took part in a creative problem solving project and saw its potential in ways that hadn’t seemed possible. That’s explained in detail below the storyboard.
Virtuoso summary. This cartoon starts with a scientist leaving a lab, clicking their fingers as they leave to turn the lights off using a wrist worn wearable. One of the lab had rabbits has escaped and finds a substance that has spilled on the floor in this empty lab. The rabbit then drinks this substance and has a perceptual transformation into a higher state of being. We, the viewers then peer into the eyes of this new higher state and are taken into a waking dream where we see a man playing a piano, a virtuoso in concert. As he plays the viewer moves from the front row of the concert to floating above the boot of Italy, watching the lights go on and off across Europe in time to the music (Fur Elise). The viewer then returns to the front row as this pianist is moving further into a state of flow, surrounded by visible musical notes as the bracelets on his hands begin to glow. The scene ends with the pianist falling backwards, giving way.
Introduction - episode name
A lab technician is heard, and then seen leaving the lab, walking past, heels clicking on the shiny floor. They walk past the camera and fade into a blur.
Opening scene
The scene cuts to the lab technician’s hand and we see them click, wearing a tasteful orange bracelet. As they do the lights go off and the screen goes black.
First cut
Lights off - Pause on a black screen
Second cut
The image below fades in, a medical bottle half filled with liquid and a blank white label - next to a molecular structure.
2nd cut fade in and out to the lab
The screen then fades from black to a lab scene, the molecule disappears but the bottle stays in the exact same position. As the lab fades in the camera pans out to see the bottle close to the edge of a counter.
Faded in lab scene
The scene cuts to black with the sound of a plastic bottle hitting the ground, bouncing around a little. The lid could audibly spin like a coin before coming to rest. After it comes to rest the viewer sees liquid spilled on floor. Note: The sound could also be of a glass bootle smashing, but that would be jarring, especially given that the lab rabbit comes along for a drink.
Liquid next to the bottom/skirting of the cupboards
A lab rabbit is scurrying around, comes by the counter to inspect the substance and takes a sip of the spillage.
An albino lab rabbit, exploring the empty lab
After sipping the spillage the rabbit transitions into a human on a neutral background, not the lab. The image below is an example animal to human metamorphosis.
Metamorphosis
The camera zooms into the eye of this human and it begins fade from brown into an ever increasing yellow/orange glow. The camera zooms into the iris and the screen goes black with only the glowing iris remaining.
Human, zoom to eye and to iris
Piano music (Fur Elise) starts to fade in and the eye is replaced by this glowing ring that suggests the bracelet.
Glowing ring (bracelet)
The scene switches from the yellow ring to a piano virtuoso playing.
Pianist playing
As he plays, the lights go on and off across the whole of Europe in time to the music.
Light show over Italy
A virtuoso is playing and he also has two bracelets on (the same bracelet as the lab technician) - These now glow on his wrist like the ring in slide 13 that represents the eye. As he plays musical notes float and flow around him.
Ecstatic pianist
The background fades away and only the player is left, falling back into ecstacy as his bracelets glow, and fades out to end scene.
Pianist falling
END.
Virtuoso origin
The origin of this first episode of Rabbit Hole was inspired by a UX research project I did for a London startup for a wearable they were building. The year before I joined this small company I’d worked on a wearable payments project while studying UX Design with the code school General Assembly so it was my current area of interest.
Wearable devices from 2015 project
The wearables I had worked on were mainly about using sensors to make payments or to control other devices by moving toward or through them, tapping or relying on bluetooth. The interaction was mostly device to device with something well designed fixed to the wrist or finger. The wearable Flicktek were designing was completely different to what I’d worked on so far because it wasn’t self contained and complete, it was an accessory that clipped to the user’s existing watch.
From the position it sat on the wrist of the user it would make a series of limited gestures to control a computer or device. I disliked this and similar things like the Myo armband that we had in the office to test, because they seemed both bulky and cumbersome. This was my personal opinion and reflected the results I had gotten in my wearable project the previous year. This was especially the feedback from female participants, to whom the look of the thing really mattered, whereas men didn’t care so much.
The Clip would work by reading the movement of tendons in the wrist
I took the Clip to some of the tech events I was hosting and conducted user feedback sessions, getting the result that it wasn’t so aesthetically pleasing. It also didn’t make intuitive sense to add something to your watch to gain limited control of some device you own. It would make using your computer or anything else harder. This wearable seemed to lack elegance design wise because it didn’t change anything, it was ugly technology for technology’s sake.
Myo gesture control armband - image from The Telegraph 3rd February 2016
Virtuoso origin - LSD Study for Creative Problem Solving
During this time working for Flicktek I remember attending a Meetup called bio changes at Imperial College in London. This Meetup was very cool, introducing me to biotechnology and the first I’d heard of lab grown meat and collective intelligence in slime moulds among other things. I remember seeing a packed notice board near the lecture hall we were using in that meeting and I look through everything on that notice board out of curiosity. I saw the plain A4 advert below, for a study about LSD. The only criteria were that you needed to working on a meaningful problem in science and technology, which I was. So I contacted them and signed up. The next few weeks involved getting permission from my doctor, showing that I was in good mental and physical health with no family history of anything neurological that could be epigenetically switched on by psychedelics. I also needed proof of the project I was working on, as well as doing some SAT aptitude tests.
I almost got cold feet and was going to pull out because while I was curios about psychedelics, I’d never taken them and imagined it would be wildly dangerous, but by that time things were in progress. I passed everything and got the green light to be part of the study. This study wasn’t like most clinical trials, we were given better food and a mentally calming and stimulating environment with patterned carpets on the walls, nice colourful mood lighting and a playlist that had been specially curated by the study team. The music was all very calming, the perfect music to trip to. This study happened over two separate weekends, and the first week someone was given the placebo. It definitely wasn’t me and that day I got to experience my first psychedelic trip in a clinically safe environment. I won’t go too much into the entire trip or the study as this is only to describe the relevance to Rabbit Hole and how Virtuoso came to be.
View of Wembley Stadium from Northwick Park Hospital
Over the course of this trip I thought about this little ugly bulky thing, but I no longer saw it as it was, I began to see it as it could be from its own point of view as if it became a living object. At one point I thought of the texture and had a moment where I thought of a school of fish and the glowing fluorescence as they turned in unison, thinking how beautiful an orange fish scale inspired band would look. Moving on into this experience while Fur Elise was playing I experienced this limited band living on the wrists of a virtuoso piano player as he played his piano in concert. I had the experience of simultaneously sitting in the front row and then flying up above the European continent at night. The same view I’d seen a few years earlier on a flight to Greece. A I looked down over the boot of Italy the lights were going on and off in time to the music being played by the pianist. That’s exactly how this cartoon and series was conceptualised. A change of perspective.
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