Dream_Jrnl is a generative literature experiment that algorithmically creates evocative and mysterious texts.
This program was created using Processing and RiTA as an exercise for Perry Hoberman’s Experiments in Interactivity II (CTIN-544) seminar. The source material is a dream log I kept during the summer of 2008.
Click here to launch Dream_Jrnl in a separate window. Interact with the application by clicking, moving the mouse or typing.
Daryl Cloran, Anita Doron and Mateo Guez’s interactive feature film, Late Fragment, is being featured at the Future of Cinema Salon at the Cannes Film Festival before it gets its DVD release on July 10th. You can check out a brief live demo of the work online at the NFB.
The future of cinema will not be defined by a single direction. Old genres will live alongside new genres. But it is increasingly becoming clear that at least one of these directions will take the form of cinema as some kind of participatory experience, where the audience of one or many may impact how a narrative unfolds itself over space or time. These new forms should not be reduced as simply “choose your own adventure” models but instead should be seen as the coming to life of post-modern preoccupations with multiplicity, diversity, open-endedness, spatial conceptions of self, and story puzzles explicitly expressed through interactive technology.
Late Fragment is an interactive film that lets audiences piece together, both literally and figuratively, the cinematic narrative in front of them. The physical experience is not unlike channel surfing in front of the television, except imagine that each channel presents different scenes from the same story. Sitting on the couch, remote control in hand, audiences can click “enter” on their remote control, and impact the way the story unfolds, sequencing the events of the story depending on when and how often they click “enter.” Late Fragment is like many of the non-linear movies we have come to love including Crash, Short Cuts, and Amores Perros. But with Late Fragment audiences now impact what scene they may get next. (nfb.ca)
This is a screen capture of someone using MGMT’s interactive “Electric Feel” video. Visit this page to download the video and try it out. Effective combination of simple masks and layers with basic pushbutton interactivity.
Game Mod/Media Archive
Concept, Sound Design and Programming: Jeff Watson
Counter-Point is a sound mod for the popular online multiplayer first-person shooter, Counter-Strike: Source. By replacing the sound files triggered by in-game events such as gunfire, explosions and shattering glass with soothing synthetic tones and instrument samples, the Counter-Point modpack creates an expressive and meditative soundtrack from the chaos of the online battlefield.
Counter-Point is intended to inspire an examination of the unconscious aesthetic collaborations that occur in competitive online gamespace.
Listen to a sample: (.mp3)
Download modpack: (.zip)
Constellation is an abstract arcade game that incorporates elements of strategy and physics-based action. Players move a white disc around a horizontally- and vertically-wrapped field. Points are scored by moving the disc into contact with slow-moving gold coins that appear one at a time at random positions on the field. Every time the player collects a coin, an increasing number of red “chasers” enter the field from random positions and gravitate toward the player. In order to dispatch the chasers, the player must guide them into a collision with a white “star.” Furthermore, every time a red chaser collides with a star, a new star is born in a random position on the field, forming the “constellation” from which the game derives its title. The player may also adjust the structure of this constellation by using a tractor beam, which draws the stars toward the player’s white disc, and a “scramble” button, which randomizes the structure of the constellation. Further twists discoverable through game play reveal additional limitations: stars that touch each other vanish, the player’s white disc bounces off stars, and so on.
Controls:
Arrow keys: Movement
Spacebar: Tractor Beam
Shift: Scramble Constellation
F4: Toggle Full Screen
ESC: Quit
Download (Windows XP):
Constellation.zip
Playable online at yoyogames.com
Alternate Reality Game
Lead Writer/Designer: Jeff Watson
Exhibitions: Torgame, 2008
The Bluerose Project is a cross-media Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designed to unfold over a period of ten days in Toronto, Canada. The game, a layered narrative concerning the disappearance and possible murder of a noted neurovirologist, is embedded in everyday environments and hews closely to the “This Is Not A Game” aesthetic of seminal ARGs such as ilovebees and The Beast. Designed for scalable player-communities and structured proximate social play within the Greater Toronto Area, The Bluerose Project seeks to deploy narrative by encouraging its participants to examine their physical and virtual environments for clues, story elements and collaborative opportunities.
If you have been provided with a password to access the Torgame development wiki, click here to launch the wiki in a new window. If you do not have a password, but would like to inquire about receiving one, please drop me a line at remotedevice-at-gmail-dot-com.
