Nothing of This is Ours from aandnota on Vimeo.

“Nothing of This is Ours” is a generative, procedurally generated multiplayer game that combines landscapes, figures, and items into an exploration of surreal worlds using the Unity engine. Without exploring the game firsthand it’s hard to say for sure if it’s successful, but from the video I get the definite sense of weirdness, of being transported to some otherworldly land. Perhaps because of the Buddhas and mindless heads I get the feeling of exploring an in-between space, a limbo between worlds. Through careful choice of models, the author succeeds in creating a definite sense of feeling and place.

Where I”m not certain the project succeeds is in playability and interaction, both of which are both a means of robustness as well as a symptom. This being an art project, it doesn’t seem right to critique it on its entertainment value, but since it is specifically billed as a multiplayer game it should provide something beyond mere visual exploration. Creative Applications writes, “Up to four players can be on the server at once, but they never see or exist together at the exact same moment. Over the Alex has become obsessed with lag and what it means for memory and the self and this project is the result.” However, this seems to me a wasted opportunity or a cop out; I don’t see any meaningful expression of lag or memory between players in the video, though maybe this comes through better in actual play.

The classic game this reminds me of is Myst, but my gut feeling is that “Nothing of This is Ours” focuses on the world and surrealistic feeling without any meaningful interaction.

SYNTHESIS from HGK IVK Interaktion on Vimeo.

SYNTHESIS is a performance of generative visual instruments accompanying a piece of minimal electronic music.  The piece consisted of nine members performing and coordinating black and white visuals along with the music, with a conductor previewing and switching between the visuals. The individual visualizations were made with Processing hooked up to a Korg NanoControl 2. This piece is especially interesting to me for its use of generativity as a means to extend and modulate human creativity.

This piece is solid — simple but well executed. There was one section of the video that I particularly didn’t like, but that’s more a matter of taste than critique.  Another section (starting at (1:19) blew me away in the visual effect it created. One of the greatest strengths of this piece is the performance aspect; that it was performed live and synchronized between several people gives it a life and human touch that purely automatic, recorded art does not have.

Frieder Nake

In researching this blog post, I came across the work of Frieder Nake, one of the first artists to use the computer as an artistic medium. I was particularly drawn to Nake’s generative pieces, three of which are above. Logically, these are simple programs that could be written in processing pretty easily, but artistically, they are striking. Golan mentioned the Ira Glass quotation, and wikipedia notes that Nake made between three and four hundred of these small projects in the five years between 1964 and 1965. I also think that Nake is worth mentioning because of how he was influenced by modern painting. He had a series named “Homage to Paul Klee.”

Myla Fay’s How I Feel

Myla Fay is a friend of mine, and today she wrote an article about the difference between how she looks and how she feels like. Accompanying the article are her drawings of how she looks and how she feels she looks. I think it’s an interesting generative art project because it mines her personal emotions for data that she then translates into simple drawings. It quickly shows how her physical self stays the same while her perception of her self wildly changes. Using low-detail outlines abstracts her experience so that the viewer can perhaps see themselves in the drawings or see how societal pressures apply to many people. I think this is the kernel of a bigger project, and I hope that Myla pursues looking at ways to illustrate the difference between reality and perception when it comes to body issues on such a personal level.