Weekly Writing

Week 8

Favourite Artists

The artists/projects I will be writing about are Kwon Hayoun and MoMAR.

The area of focus of Kwon Hayoun exactly ties into what I talked about in the abstract for my analysis paper of Communications and Technology. I wish to create an interactive/immersive installation wherein I could tell history of where I come from along with my story. The line ' a memory of a memory, an experience of an experience' especially stands out in her website to me as this is a very unique perspective for me. Up until now I had just been thinking about providing a 1:1 exact simulation of the experience with VR but I realize what we are doing here is an art form as well and it is incomplete without the artist's interpretation. My entire approach to VR had been so technical, it laid upon building the exact replicas, models, textures etc. that I had forgotten about the story telling aspect of it, especially the fact that I can chose to take creative liberty with my choices in executing a project. DMZ by her, which we had coincidentally even viewed in class, was my favourite. The way she chose to show the paradoxical unreal yet real nature of the DMZ was beautiful and I strive to do the same with my work.

MoMAR is another project that lies in philosophical alignment with a lot of my beliefs and even work I aim to do outside of AR/VR/IM. The very nature of a lot of modern art lying in this hyper-exclusive space only accessible to the upper echelons of society has often not sat right with me.A lot of the artists I respect even in fine arts aim to shatter this image of contemporary art, my personal favourite being Takeshi Murakami. A lot of what had appealed to me about open source tech as well was the often collaborative, democratized nature of it. This was exemplified when I learnt about cryptocurrency, blockchains and NFTs as well. They aimed to decentralize the financial system and subsequently the art world as well. Hence, when I found out MoMAR works on the same mission I was very impressed by their project. This excerpt from their website was especially powerful:

"We must also recognize then that the term “open to the public” is not an invitation, but a declaration of values. Values that are not our own. And so it has remained for 335 years. Until now."

Invisible Cities

Zobeide, Cities and Desire 5, stood out to me because of the story behind it's origin. It involved men of various nations having a dream wherein they see a naked women running through the streets of a city. All of them enchanted by her beauty set out to find such a city. While they couldn't, they ended up at the same place and decided to make this city the city they saw in the dreams. They all tried arranging the streets/obstacles in such a way that if the woman were to ever come again she'd not be able to escape. Alas, the woman never came. This city stood out to me because it used the medium of writing to describe a city really well. Other mediums like film, photography or painting could perhaps cover things about the city like its monuments, its people, its buildings etc. sometimes better than literature. But doing what Calvino/Marco Polo did with Zobeide is only possible in a medium like literature, spilling the entire history of the city beautifully in a few lines. Hence, revealing a lot about how and why it came to be.

Melania, Cities & The Dead 1, reminds me a lot of where I grew up around, Delhi. Calvino/Marco Polo described Melania using it's people mainly and the interactions they have. Similarly, while Delhi has beautiful monuments, structures, parks, history etc. what makes Delhi the city it is for me is the people in it. Calvino/Marco Polo also describes Melania as "you return to Melania after years and you find the same still going on". This is one of the charms and yet frustrations with Delhi for me. As much as I love how I can come back any time and I'll still meet the same sort of people as soon as I step into the city, it saddens me as well because the people are hardly changing or modernizing in their mindsets. One of my favourite Indian artists, Lifafa aka Suryakant Sawhney, has a song called 'Wahin ka Wahin' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Lk-Lg7fhDw) describing India in general. 'Wahin ka Wahin' literally translated into "where I left you" and he echoes similar frustrations as me here, saying "O lovers of this nation, Wake up! Everything is in the same place as I left it to be" in a bittersweet melancholic tone.

Q) Many cities are described in explicit detail—magnolia gardens, radiator pipes, facades, inhabitants—but some aspects are more abstract. How might these more conceptual details translate into a virtual environment and what we might do while there?

I think sound is a huge thing that can be used in virtual environments to add more to a city. A lot of parts in the cities are made by the various types of sounds that exist there or sometimes the lack of sound at a place. The sound of traffic, the sound of animals, the sound of people add so much to a place's definition. As mentioned in my above response as well, the people in a city are a huge part of the city as well. Maybe adding different kinds of NPCs (Non Playable Characters) to a city's landscape can provide more depth and personality to it as well. The interactions we have with people around us shape a city hugely, so adding interactions to these people can be crucial. A city's layout is another thing that tells a story, some cities have a long history and were organically built, hence they were very chaotic and hard to navigate. Modern cities that were planned have a very organized structure to them. Weather is another huge aspect for a city, as it can substantially change the feeling of being in that city. Cities that are always cloudy and dark have a more depressing energy to them than cities with very bright sunny days.

Week 3

After watching Becoming a Dragon, I had to look up about the Real Life Test that trans people have to take for gender assignment surgery. I wasn't aware of this and after learning about this I messaged one of my trans friends to talk about it as well. The entire idea behind such a test seems so convoluted and useless to me. I rewatched Becoming a Dragon after all this research and it is a very clever method of highlighting the futility of the RLT by leveraging the new means of technology available. What is even more impressive is that Becoming a Dragon happened 13 years ago when a lot of the AR/Mixed Reality technology was still in an infantile stage.

'Telling in Stories in Spaces without saying anything loud' was a very crucial reading for development in this class and it has benefitted my conceptions of creating both real and virtual spaces greatly. Kentucky Route Zero interestingly has been in my shopping list on Steam for a long time and hearing that being mentioned in this video made me look it up again. Laura E. Hall's experiences in building escape rooms and the theoretical understanding of them she imparted with this video will be greatly beneficial in creating truly immersive virtual spaces. Her point about the audience only knowing a fraction of what the creator knows and only focusing on what is crucial for the audience really stood out to me.

VR / AR Fundamentals — 2) Audiovisual Spatiality & Immersion was an interesting read albeit I got confused by a lot of the technicalities in the end. The part that stood out to me was about what a real hologram is and what isn't. Just like the students in Michael Naimark, I thought I had seen a real hologram before but I apparently haven't. Another point that stood out to me was, "While stereoscopic displays simply require twice as much data as monoscopic displays, holographic displays require thousands of times more data to display all viewpoints". It never crossed my mind till the author mentioned covering the window and looking through a small hole. It is truly a remarkable challenge to create actual holographic image.

Environmental Storytelling ties in to 'Telling Stories in Spaces Without Saying Anything Out Loud' as well. In fact, even that brought up a game that I like (but haven't finished sadly haha), 'What Remains of Edith Finch'. Games with immersive environments like that or Kentucky Route Zero or one of my favorites Outer Wilds are really my favorite genre of video games. Learning the theory behind what goes on in creating them was really fascinating. Scout Expedition Co.'s experience of taking a video game experience and transporting that into the real world also helped me realize how well designed so many of these video games are.

Week 2

The explore part of this assignment was perhaps my favorite. Creating new kids of exhibition has always held special interest for me. In fact this is what I will be working on in Berlin. I will be taking a class called Augmenting the Museum and so this website was a perfect inspiration piece. The audio narrative especially felt haunting, perhaps made more haunting by the robotic tone of the narrator as opposed to using a human voice actor. The topic of the exhibition was haunting to begin with and the delivery was perfect to enforce the consequences that the development of such a device could have. I think putting the audience right in the subject of the exhibition is a great way to enforce the message of an exhibition piece.

I never imagined Interior Design to be a place where game designers/developer could get inspiration from but after the watching video it makes perfect sense. Learning about concepts like order and enrichment in Interior Design and then implementing them in Game Design has helped me get a better understanding of scene design. A thing that stood out to me was using constriction in space to create tension (the Uncharted example). I have been playing video games fro quite some time but it never crossed my mind that this is how a lot of tension in the games i grew and liked playing was created. Learning about BOB: the Chalice study was interesting as well because I never imagined someone could create an entire TV show on Unity. The graphics really look unique and it has helped me understand the power of Unity more. The concept of the game too, wherein artificial intelligence becomes so good that it lives your life better than you is a very interesting concept that I would like to get more into.

The place helped me understand a lot of VR experiences in technical terms. Learning about concepts like Place Illusion, Plausibility Illusion, first order systems, sensorimotor contingencies etc, has helped me get a more theoretical understanding of virtual reality which I believe will be ultimately useful in implementing it practically as well.

The podcast's topic is something which I would like to learn more about. The relation between how virtual reality might affect your dreams never really crossed my mind as I don't have a lot of experience with virtual reality. Virtual reality affecting the encoding part of the dream making process is something which I feel can have a lot of interesting impact in topics like resolving childhood trauma, PTSD etc.

Week 1

I know of the cultural importance Halo holds in the gaming community but I wasn't aware of the impact they have had in Alternate Realities. Learning about the iLoveBees campaign was really fascinating as ARG are something I am very interested in it. Everything from the initial roll out by sending people honey to the final reveal using the Axons was very well thought. What surprised me was how people from all over the United States ( and later United Kingdom) actually ended up coming together and working on a sort of trivial common goal. Hearing about the man who braved a hurricane in Florida to activate the Axon for example went on to show how much of a hold this campaign had on the people. Even the storytelling aspect of the campaign struck me with how in-depth the lore went and how they were able to show all these different fragments of Mellissa using just "Artificial Intelligence" on the website. Something that really intrigues me is how the campaign would take place if it had to take place now. They had to simulate Artificial Intelligence on the website in 2004 but it would be interesting to see an actual AI talk and reveal this plot. Especially with vocal synthesizers the Axon phone booth aspect of the project could be modernized too.

I have been curious about how one could use Alternate Realities to highlight important social issues and Blackout seems to tackle the very same question. Showing the past, present and future experiences of Black people I feel is a great way to understand the situation they are in right now, how they ended up there and what is going to happen if steps aren't taken to tackle important social issues like these.

Changing Same is my favorite project out of all 3 because of how experimental it is. It is an interesting blend of how filmmakers and technologist could come together in this modern world to push the boundaries of what art can be now. Changing same is a feat of both story telling and technology. I feel like this coming together of film and technology is still in a very primitive state right now. To borrow Janet Murray's terminology, it is in an additive state right now as opposed to an expressive one. I feel like once access and understanding of this technology becomes ubiquitous is when we will actually enter the expressive state.