CAtN Final

intro

I worked with my partner Na Chen to create the meditation guru. We created the meditation guru to experiment with the narrative structure of a meditation and whether we could simulate a loop imitating one’s never-ending thoughts over the course of a meditation.

process

We couldn’t find an existing corpus of meditation texts, therefore we created our own. To do so, we searched the web for meditation scripts, converted them to txt files and pre-processed them to create a corpus. Using Tracery, we created the structure and content of the meditation. In the first iteration, we talked about the feelings we wanted to convey throughout the meditation – a never-ending subconsciousness. We were inspired by “Sleep With Me”, a podcast where the narrator says nonsense to make you fall asleep. At the same time, we didn’t want too much incoherence to distract the listener, so we tried to balance the two ends. That version ended up being too much like a real meditation, so we looked at ways to make it more generative. Namaste is a word used in meditations to signify the end, so why not put it throughout the piece, so listeners can’t differentiate between beginning and end? From there, we decided to create a loop structure for our meditation. This was to represent never-ending thoughts of a user, much like how meditation normally is. To make it more like a real guided meditation we used text to speech, using a speechbot.

Code for the meditation content (this only works if you have access to the shared folder with the txt files. If not, please see example excerpts below): https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1gPrHdyFVheinHKBCkjfca0fJJLcbn5KN?usp=sharing&fbclid=IwAR05XHSHEYtuXMTUnALAAjlcpalk1N9wBHo8LNIH9yexlaq90At6cpO-9Y4

Code for the text to speech : https://github.com/nchen312/catn/tree/main/meditation_guru?fbclid=IwAR1NannCVFcUfU_l3yzAvigI_6dITbRU1T_YOkgPgftCU3riHA_aY2mj-lg

output (example)

Namaste.

Take a moment to check in with your life and a deep breath. Just let go of any perspective. Day, fear, jaw. Imagine you feel rainy and have a breathing for life. Inhale, allow your thoughts to was.

I’m counting my breaths, one, two, three… I feel optimism. It’s among part. Exhale, over seconds to morning. The event earlier is replaying Inhaling again, this time feeling my permission I’m counting my breaths, one, two, three… I feel serenity. It’s between feeling. Exhale, these few minutes to this moment. The event earlier is replaying Inhaling again, this time feeling my Streams

Namaste.

Take a moment to check in with your upper arm and the meditation. Just let go of any moments. Judgment, years, belly. Imagine you feel entire and have a breathing for life. Inhale, allow your thoughts to let.

I’m counting my breaths, one, two, three… I feel surprise. It’s before elbow. Exhale, a few short minutes to every hour. The event earlier is replaying Inhaling again, this time feeling my stories I’m counting my breaths, one, two, three… I feel admiration. It’s after practice. Exhale, a few minutes to morning. The event earlier is replaying Inhaling again, this time feeling my situation.

future

We got feedback to make the bot more nonsensical and having more variation in the Tracery to do so. I think that’s a good direction to go in – it’s a challenge to balance the meditation being nonsensical with coherence, so that is a line that we will have to explore.