micitari /DANM210 /asg 2

Bibliography/Things I wanna read:
Mateas, Michael. "Expressive AI: Games and Artificial Intelligence." In Proceedings of Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference, Utrecht, Netherlands, Nov. 2003.

Davies, Char. "Virtual Space". SPACE in Science, Art and Society (2004): 69-104.

Davies, Char. "Changing Space: Virtual reality as an Arena of Embodied Being." Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (2001): 293-300.

McMahan?, Alison. "Immersion, Engagement, and Presence - A Method for Analyzing 2-D Video Games". The Video Game Reader (2003): 67-86.

Crawford, Chris. "Interactive Stroytelling". The Video Game Reader (2003): 259-273.

Woodward, William P, Ono, Sokyo and Sakamoto, Sadao. Shinto: The Kami Way. Tuttle Publishing: Paperback, 2004.

André Breton. Manifestoes of Surrealism containing the 1st, 2nd and introduction to a possible 3rd Manifesto. University of Michigan Press, 1972

Turkle, Sherry. "Video Games and Computer Holding Power." The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

Gansing, Kristoffer. The Myth of Interactivity or the Interactive Myth? - Interactive Film as an Imaginary Genre. MelbourneDAC2003. 2003.

Holmes, Tiffany. Arcade Classics Spawn Art? Current Trends in the Art Game Genre. MelbourneDAC2003. 2003.

Hourigan, Ben. The Utopia of Open Space in Role-Playing Videogames. MelbourneDAC2003. 2003.

Pargam, Daniel. Word and code, code as world. MelbourneDAC2003. 2003.

Wilson, Laetitia. Interactivity or Interpassivity: a Question of Agency in Digital Play. MelbourneDAC2003. 2003.

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Question for Each Member of my Cluster:
Lea:
What do you think about movies such as March of the Penguins projecting human emotions onto animals? Do you plan to research this? I would love to know the extent that animals feel what we feel!

Chau-Marie:
What is the purpose of the experience to you? What does <the light art guy, I forget his name> try to communicate with his art?

Michael B:
Is this supposed to be entertainment? What do you want the audience to feel through this performance?

Luci:
You mentioned that you would like to create an outdoor installation, is there any special significance to the installation being outdoors, or is it mostly a practical thing?

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Documentation on one Inspirational/motivating/similar/relevant project:

Virtual Spaces by Char Davies

Osmose and Emphemere are virtual reality with navigation via a breathing interface!

Traditionally VR is used as an escape into a utopian fantasy. These works are instead an attempt to enable us to experience life away from our everyday assumptions while remaining embodied. The goal is for us to perceive he world around us 'freshly'.

Immersive virtual space - a place where "mental models or abstract constructs of the world can be given virtual embodiment... It is a philosophical and participatory medium." A place where "Immaterial is confused with bodily-felt, and the imaginary with the strangely real."

The medium's above paradoxical can be used to leave our usual assumptions and distractions behind and instead to experience the 'fresh' feeling as "sentient beings immersed in the flow of life through space time."

Davies believes that that there is a 'cultural tradjectory' towards disbodiment. People tend to create worlds with no dirt, aging or anything conventionally undesirable.

Davies' projects are designed such that it resists that tendency. The navigation is grounded in the users breathing and the visuals are semi transparent (described more below) to contrast the more common utopian VR.

The goal is to present nature beyond the veil of surface appearances.

The pieces are supposed to give a feeling of participation/communion rather than control as with much VR.

"My lifelong artistic project is to re-present the world as I have intuitively sensed it to be - behind the veil of appearances - as immaterial, interelated and dynamicflaux."

Davies' vision is very far, far from 20/20 and it causes boundries between objects dissolve in light. There are no hard edges. Things "dissolve into ambiguous enveloping spatiality of soft, semi-transparent, intermingling volumes of varying hues and luminosities."

Visual acuity causes attention to be focused on the future or what lies ahead. When you cannot see things clearly everywhere you go you are consumed in a volume of light. The focus is not on what lies ahead, but rather the present. Davies says the same for sound.

The projects give the feeling of floating. It is likened to what many scuba divers feel, which is an analogy Davies used earlier to describe her perception of the world, submerged in the sea.

The wolds that the immersant navigates are partially abstract and partially 'real'.

The intent is for the user to ficus on their own perception, or their own being.