Recollections of “Recollections”

Animation, Exemplary Work,
8/28/07

A still from Recollections

There’s a wonderful reverberation in there. It’s the concrete floors that propagate it—reminding you that you’ve been welcomed inside an experiment, a work in progress.  Even though I enjoyed the Reuben, it was carpeted, and thus robbed of that reverberation, that sound that came to represent a massive space filled with physically principled play.  I assume the reverberation is still there, but I haven’t been to the Exploratorium in probably 20 years, so maybe one of you can leave a comment and reassure me that it hasn’t changed.

My favorite memory there is of an installation called Recollections, by Ed Tannenbaum, which I must have seen in the early 1980s.  Standing in front of a large video projection, your silhouette is captured, colored, and added to the image being projected, in real time.  The result is that your movements leave cycling washes of color, creating a hypnotic feedback loop between your actions and the screen’s reactions. (Ed periodically updates the piece to keep up with the technology curve.)

I remember being aware of the pixelation of the display, which makes sense, seeing as its resolution was only 256 x 240.  I remember an indistinct realization that the colors were passing through the pixels—that the silhouettes weren’t actually self-contained objects, but data passing through a static grid.  I remember the palette shifts that would change the whole tone of the experience, and waiting for my favorite ones to reappear. I think I was vaguely aware that the piece was running on an Apple II—the technology felt within reach.  Mainly though, I remember just being really happy, and not wanting to leave. Yeah. Stuff like that would be good to make.

Thanks, Ed, that was awesome.

 

I got to play a Theremin!

Fun, Music, Wii,
8/24/07

Leon Theremin playing a Theremin

Some pure geeky fun today. A few weeks ago I was at the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in San Diego, and was psyched to find a Theremin included in their new audio-related exhibition (which is quite good).  I’d never seen one in person, much less played one, so I immediately ran over and launched into my best rendition of Bernard Herrmann’s theme from The Day the Earth Stood Still.  I’m sure I embarrassed myself mightily, but who cares! I got to play a Theremin!

The Theremin I saw was the classic “piece of furniture with antennae” form factor you see in the image of Leon Theremin himself to the right, not the sleek Moog version you can see below in a performance of the Zelda theme.

This may qualify as a geek singularity: using the Wii remote to simulate a Theremin playing the theme from Star Trek. Enjoy…

 

 

“We get to decide” what is next-gen

Games, Interactive Design, Wii,
8/20/07

Don Daglow

This is so right on, I couldn’t pass it up. In a speech at the GCDC in Germany this afternoon (covered in this article at GamesIndustry.biz), Stormfront Sudios President and CEO Don Daglow made some excellent points that deserve to be repeated far and wide.

“If it changes the player’s view of what interactive entertainment is; if you think differently about it; if you have a new perspective after playing the game that you didn’t have before, to me that’s next-gen,” Daglow said in a refutation of conventional wisdom that you can’t create a next-gen experience without dramatic increases in processing power. I couldn’t agree more.

The most significant innovations waiting in the wings for interactive art and entertainment are absolutely not about processing power, better algorithms, or any form of rocket science, though they may be enabled by technological innovation (as with the Wii remote). They are simply smart design, inspired thinking, artistry, and most importantly, perspective—an actual point of view on the world that arises from one’s personal experience.

Another Daglow quote: “We’ve spent a quarter of a century saying ‘the machine is holding me back’... The only problem is that now the machines are so powerful, we’ve lost our excuse.” This became really clear to me in the waning years of the last console generation (PS2, Xbox, GameCube), when I started to get bored with gaming in general. Everything was a retread; new versions of old games with upgraded graphics. I was shocked out of my complacency, however, when the Wii controller was first announced (evidenced by the fact that as soon as I heard the announcement I immediately estimated the dimensions of the remote and built a Duplo version the same size to start imagining what was possible…)

Daglow defends the Wii as a next-gen platform from the skeptics who doubt that it’s lesser-powered processor qualifies it as such with a blunt truth that should be remembered and repeated:

“Nobody gets to tell us what we think is next-gen - we get to decide for ourselves.”

Amen to that.

 

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