Signal Drift

For this project, I want to look at how technology is affecting young people’s sleep schedules. With phones, tablets, and other screens becoming a normal part of our bedrooms, not getting enough sleep has become really common, affecting around 30% of kids and most teenagers. Studies have shown that about 90% of research on this topic found a link between screen use and going to bed later or getting less sleep overall. This is often because screen time takes away from sleep time, keeps the brain stimulated, and exposes people to light that makes it harder to fall asleep.

I used a sequence-based structure that mimics the fragmented quality of dreams. On top of that, I incorporated a blob-tracking technique to visualize the shifting, unstable mental state of my subject as they struggle to sleep and drift in and out of digital overstimulation.

Blob tracking is a computer vision technique used to detect and follow moving shapes or “blobs” in a video stream by grouping them into distinct objects with a position and duration. It involves analyzing an image or video, identifying regions that differ from the background, and then tracking their movement over time. This is commonly used for applications like interactive installations, video effects, and object analysis.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18oUXjxR7hBrvpu4HNtVOzNcXDHbTzQjx/view?usp=sharing