Boxing Beats. This experience is an immersive, sample-based drum machine synthesizer placed in the environment of a box gym. There are 6 “playable” objects that feature live samples I recorded myself in my local boxing gym.

The 6 playable objects include:

• Right Punching Bag
• Middle Punching Bag
• Left Punching Bag
• Speed Bag
• Wall Bag
• Lockers

As the player moves around the gym, if the gloves are positioned within a playable distance from one of the six playable yellow objects, the player can right click or left click to punch the object with the right or left glove respectively. As the gym clock is playing, the punches will snap to grid and loop every 16 slots. The player can consecutively keep adding hits on each object. Once the player hits all 6 objects, they are “warmed up” for their fight, and boom, lights, camera, action! The match is about to get started! Make your way to the ring and…box!

Subtler adjustments for look/feel included the smoothness of the bobble of the player’s gloves, and correspondence to BPM. Additionally, the wall bag sound is slightly louder and pitched up to be more present in the beat. I added a locker sound as an extra 6th layer for the user to punch if it occurs to them (Hint: it should – all yellow objects are “playable!”). I also swapped out all of the stock Ali posters and replaced them with Madame Gandhi concert posters.

Ge had suggested ghost gloves remain in place playing the beat once a beat is set. I had considered this in earlier models before the idea had been offered, but I didn’t like aesthetically how that looked because I didn’t want a ghost opera necessarily. I instead chose to have audio/visual feedback by having the punching bags illuminate yellow on beat, once the beat has been set. Ge also suggested that the human bobbing to the beat feel more rhythmic, boxer-like and intuitive, so I matched the gloves bouncing and head bobbing to the BPM clock of the gym. This can be toggled accordingly.

Buttons Guide:

m: Toggles Metronome On/Offnumbers 0-9: Adjusts BPM (e.g. type 7 for 120BPM)

Build can be found here.

Project files can be found here.

Thank you to my audience on social media for feedback and enthusiasm about how this might integrate nicely as an Oculus product. Thank you to Ge and Kunwoo for the positivity, support and good ideas throughout the experience of building this project. Thank you to Maggie Shahmirzadi at my boxing gym Outlaws in Los Angeles, and to my coach Brandon Krause for giving me private access to his gym during the recording process. Thank you to the class for feedback, and specifically to Max Jardetzky for his ongoing wisdom and knowledge. This has been my hardest class and absolutely the most rewarding. Thank you so much to the 256A family. It feels really special to submit this final project!

Learn more about the project here.