Work
sovid – 01 Reading
8. The Critical Engineer looks to the history of art, architecture, activism, philosophy and invention and finds exemplary works of Critical Engineering. Strategies, ideas and agendas from these disciplines will be adopted, re-purposed and deployed.
I think this is this the most important tenet of this manifesto because if we continue to function in a society where computation is becoming more and more relevant, the way we approach exploring computation should draw techniques from every discipline. In the same way Leah Buechley argues to change the way STEM subjects are taught, the critical engineer repurposes ideas from different disciplines.
vikz-Intersections
sovid – Looking Outwards #1
I recently attended a lecture at SIGGRAPH 2019 called "Classic Art, Cutting Edge", in which I was exposed to an animated short created for Google Spotlight. The 3D animated short told the story of an old sailor who finds redemption when he saves a young girl who had fallen overboard her ship. I enjoyed the story, but what captivated me the most was the way the animation was presented. The team of ten or so people at Boathouse studios had managed to create a beautiful sketch-like ocean scene that was able to run in realtime and in VR. I believe the project took them almost a year since the team was so small and the film was about 12 minutes. I am very interested in the new ways film and storytelling can be shown outside the scope of traditional theaters, and I have been working with more VR related projects recently. The shaders and ocean scripts were created by the team, as animating and simulating the ocean using normal simulation in Maya, for instance, would be too expensive for VR (the whole film is set in the ocean). I admire how they were able to create a captivating film, where the viewer has the ability to look wherever they would like but still be able to follow the narrative the way they intended.
A theatrical (non VR) version can be found here.
vikz-IterationExercise
sovid – Intersections
iSob-Intersections
meh-Intersections
Link to p5js sketch: https://editor.p5js.org/meij_who/sketches/SWjkOGWLR
iSob-IterationExercise
Zapra – lookingoutwards01
Limbo by Playdead, 2010
As a lover of all things whimsical and uncanny, I'd describe discovering Limbo as my first experience being truly in awe of computational art. Developed by the small, Danish studio known as Playdead, it is just as much a work of art as it is a puzzle-based video game. Starting in a dark forest without evident controls or instructions, the game chronicles the terrifying challenges of a young boy as he travels through "the edge of hell." Unlike my favorite movies and books that could fall into the same genre, I'm in love with how Limbo uses code to tell a story and invites you to experience art through interaction. It feels far more intimate than animation; as you are tasked with saving this unfortunate protagonist, the creator invites you to explore and uncover what they've made for you.
Starting as an independent project by Arnt Jensen in 2004, the game took 6 years to complete and expanded to a team of 16 by the time of its release. According to Wikipedia, much of Limbo's artistic direction drew from Jensen's personal experiences as a child and his admiration for the film noir genre. Martin Stig Andersen, an expert in "acousmatic music," compliments the exceptional art direction with an unearthly soundtrack comprised of computer-generated sounds. The game was created using Visual Basic and Visual Studio. Following Limbo's major success, Playdead expanded as a company and developed its second eerie horror game, Inside, in 2017 (as I patiently waited 3 years for its release).
