Although I did not learn about this artist until just recently, I would like to explore the boundary between game and interactive computational art. Mario Von Rickenbach is a designer, artist, and programmer that seems to blur the line for me. One way I would argue he does this is through his loose interpretation of a game– most of his big projects do not have enemies or obstacles to overcome, some do not even have real objectives. Many of his games like Plug & Play and Mirage are more exploratory. In Plug & Play, he took what was a very surreal short film and a very abstract concept and turned it into a computer game. As evident by the Let’s Play below, the game is not clear in its objective or even in its explanation of how to progress. The video above also has an explanation of the sorts of mechanisms used in Unity to create the physics behind some of the gameplay.

Several other examples of projects that blur this line were apart of the Bit Bash Festival, a Chicago game festival celebrating independent and alternative games and designers. Many of the projects as seen in the video below can in fact be called games, but they also exploit bugs in computer graphics to create a specific look– “vaporwave”. Games like this, again, can be looked at as surreal, with much more intention placed on the graphics of the game than the inventiveness of the gameplay itself.

For my looking outward, I chose to examine the project “HYPER-REALITY” by Keiichi Matsuda. While it is not necessarily interactive in a literal way, the project presents a speculative first person  experience for future augmented reality that I find myself re-watching on a regular basis because it is so rich in depth. It feels interactive because of the amount of thought it, and the amount of thought it generates in the viewer. The quality of the special effects are extremely high, and they are arguably surpassed by the richness of conceptual content. The video presents a dystopian future for wearable augmented reality and bio feedback/internet of things style devices. As a big fan of cyberpunk novels, this project reminded me of some of my favorite books. Not only because of the content, but because of the artist’s attention to narrative detail in the story. Although the content presented is absurd, the linear path from contemporary technology, to the technology presented in the video is very clear. And it is made clear without the need for any explanation that breaks the mythology of this world. I think it was made by filming in a city, and strategically overlaying generated and digitally content on real places, paying close attention to perspective lines. I would imagine that this work was inspired by cyberpunk books and films.

HYPER-REALITY from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

I want to write about an interactive digital walk site called VOID. Its unconventional, unexpected, versatile ways of interaction and subtle, submerging experience throughout the story, make it an unique learning subject for me to revisit. And every time I do, I can still see something new, the hidden glowing letters on the bottom, the different spectrums the black ice reflects, the dazzling sound from the icy, wiry and sharp geometries surrounding the letters of the Hi-Res…

VOID is a digital walk created by Robin Gardeur(IeSHKA) and the Hi-Res team in 2005. The project is very conceptual, exploring possibilities of ideas and imaginations through sounds and visuals. The forms and shapes are impossible to describe, yet so hard to look away, and each chapter has its own theme and dynamic, but together they become a Aside from the visuals, the sound effects is so well integrated, changing according to every input of the user, every shape and concept.

On the preface it writes: “All art is created from nothing into something. Our imaginations piece together concepts which we then transform as well as manipulating mass to fill space. We use VOID to house these pieces, and we see the emptiness that surrounds them as potential for new ideas.” It is fascinating that the creators choose to make the idea of “idea” into a “out of reality” experience that is well thought out and beautifully put together.

The website was built using WebGL and Web audio technologies, threejs, howlerjs, GSAP and Coffee Collider. Although they all look quite intimidating, I determine to use my time in the course to learn more about them and open up the possibilities for my own ideas at the same time. Will be quite a journey.

Creating the VOID: https://medium.com/@HiReSLondon/creating-the-void-851d95488dc1#.9z8hn036n

VOID: http://void.hi-res.net

VOID II: http://void-ii.hi-res.net/

I was very amused by Maryyann Landlord and Ralph Kim’s VR piece at the FREE GERMS 2016 Senior Exhibition last semester. In their work, the user got to play the role of an insidious looking character on a bus/subway. As this character, you were able to pop the balloons of small children-like creatures, and by doing so, you made them cry and then they died. You essentially killed them by ruining their happiness. I think there is something compelling about interactive pieces, and I really enjoyed the style of this piece in particular. I like the idea of bringing people into very imaginative worlds and taking on different roles in these worlds. They somehow managed to pull together a piece with an incredibly dark concept, but it felt like it was coated in a layer of sugar. It was very satisfying.

The first exposure to computer-based generativity that I was interesting to me was when I learned about the computer generated random environments ins The Elder Scrolls Arena and Daggerfall. I didn’t play them because I was too young, but I learned about them while playing a later game in the franchise. I’ve always been interested in the world-building aspects of video games so I was very interested in learning that the worlds in these two games had been created by computers, instead of people working hard to craft every inch of an in-game world that was 62,394 mi^2. Even though it is an old game and lacks quality, just the sheer size of it is something I find really amazing and interesting. This is probably one of the things that got me interested in how computers can make things, instead of just being used as tools for people to make things.

https://www.team-lab.net/works/crows_blossoming_on_collision/

This piece by TeamLab was the catalyst that got me interested in new media arts. The animation is projected onto the viewers in the gallery, giving the whole room a sense of movement. The music combined with the motion of the work creates an emotional and almost overwhelming experience. TeamLab is a Japanese collective group of engineers, animators, designers, artists, programmers, etc. I’m not sure how many people work on a single piece or how long it may have taken them. I imagine that this animation required custom software, but I’m very well versed in animation software. Their work is clearly rooted in and influenced by prior Japanese art pieces. TeamLab makes a lot of public art or geared towards children, so their pieces are both very engaging and relatable to the general audience.

When I was 12, I was on the way back to Chicago from visiting my grandparents in Louisville, and had only the Toy Story 2 DVD and a portable DVD player to entertain myself. After I watched the movie and sat around bored for a while, I decided to watch the movie again but this time with directors commentary.

In that, they talked a lot about how far 3D computer animation had come since the first Toy Story. How now they were able to process and render so much more than just a few years ago. I hadn’t really thought all that much about the difference technological advances had made in 3D animation until then. All of the sudden I was noticing the difference in quality between every 3D animation I watched and decided going down a career path in the animation industry would be fun.

PIXAR has pushed once stiff moving characters, to nearly photo realistic accuracy and are always looking to continue to push the limits of computer animation. But PIXAR in addition to their A+ team of software engineers, has amazing artists and storytellers. It’s not all about the graphics that makes their movies enjoyable, but their commitment to the highest industry standards, is admirable.

I have been inspired by Karolina Sobecka’s project Sniff since I heard about it four years ago. This project was, as far as I’m concerned, extremely innovative for its time – and it is surprising when I look at the documentation on this project and realize it was made 7 years ago. This is an example of a site-specific interactive projection in public space. This project utilizes computer vision, Open Frameworks, and the real time graphics game engine, Unity 3D.

The project took place on a storefront window, and a sidewalk in New York City. Using an IR camera, people’s movements were monitored, and an animated dog “reads” the gestural response of the users to inform its artificial intelligence system, forming a relationship with the person who is interacting with it (which could be read as friendly, excited, aggressive, or standoffish). I feel this was innovative in many ways – the artists, Karolina Sobecka and James George, wrote custom software to create the project. But more importantly, they explored in an effective way the emotional and psychological impacts that could take place within an interaction with a digital “presence” – in this case, a dog. Many questions are raised here. Who is affecting whom? Where is cause and effect? Can you have an embodied experience with a digital experience? Can you summon genuine emotion from a digital presence? These are questions that I ask in my own work, and would like to explore in my research, creating interactive, digital experiences that explore our relationship to space, examine our connection to each other, and focus on embodiment. And I believe embodiment with a direct link to the spatial conditions (site specific) around us are the most powerful.

Sobecka’s work was inspired by the essay, “The Body We Care For,” by Vinciane Despret, which discusses a horse named Hans who was believed to have been able to learn mathematics. However, the horse was simply responding to physical and emotional signs from its handlers. She quotes Despret, “Who influences and who is influenced, in this story, are questions that can no longer receive a clear answer. Both, human and horse, are cause and effect of each other’s movements. Both induce and are induced, affect and are affected. Both embody each other’s mind.”

These questions, which I believe are becoming increasingly imperative, are at the root of my research.

Here’s a video of someone interacting with the work.

The thing that may have most inspired me to begin to learn coding was the program Meander that was used in Disney’s short film, Paperman. I have always loved animation, but before I saw Paperman, there was always such a clear distinction for me between 2D and 3D. 2D had distinct stylistic advantages, while 3D could achieve gorgeous and realistic effects. Although the new wave of 3D animation was exciting, there was a bit of nostalgic longing for the old 2D movies that always stayed with me. Hand drawn lines have an appeal and stylish nature that I’ve never seen really matched in a 3D film. With certain nuances, most 3D films give off the same sort of feeling. With Paperman, it was different. I was amazed. Even if the style was classic Disney, the feeling the animation gave off, the atmosphere of the lighting and lines, was unique. I looked up the short later and found that the effect was achieved by using a program called Meander that was made in Disney’s R&D department. Meander made it so that the short could be animated in 3D, but that 2D lines could be hand drawn on top, that would morph, contour, and follow the curves of the 3D spaces and characters. They had essentially given a 3D movie a further 2D appeal. It was because of Paperman that I realized the possibilities that computer science brought to the field of animation, and that by learning computer science, I could open up those possibilities for myself.

Initially when given the assignment, I worried over the fact that I had no personally recognizable exposure to what I defined as interactive/computational art, project, or installation; perhaps I overthought and unnecessarily limited myself, but my aspiration in utilizing technology and design together stems from experience of sequential narratives such as animations and videogames–and ultimately decided to make this reflection on what I consider to be a compromise between an interactive work on a medium with which I was more familiar:
Such is the videogame Flower by thatgamecompany, in which the player is the wind and guides and collects petals by interacting with the surrounding environment; the goals and journey in each level vary, but involve flight and exploration to create an idyllic atmosphere. The game was created by a development team, which included producers, directors, engineers, designers, illustrators, writers, and composers amongst other members to accommodate for every last detail to be successfully integrated into the interface. Flower was actually the second project in a 3-game deal with PlayStation, in which Sony offered to fund three games from the company, meaning that it is specific to the PS3 and would likely not be available on any other platforms in the future.
However, Flower challenges traditional gaming conventions by delivering a simple gameplay using accessible controls (SIXAXIS motion sensors) and a medium that is meant to evoke positive emotions in the gamer; the team viewed their efforts as creating a work of art, removing elements and mechanics that were not provoking the desired response in the players. The result is a narrative arc that progresses through visual aesthetic and emotional cues as the audience fades from the external and stressful world. As a student whose goal is to effectively have technology and art coexist, this game provides future opportunity of advanced visual, audio, and interactive escapes to engage players and strum the chords of feelings that all consumers naturally have: this is something important to me as a gamer and an artist, that there is a feedback or response between the resulting products and the audience.

Official project website//
PlayStation based website//