For the final project, we took our concept from “Pac Man” and an online game called “agar.io”. Because everyone knows how Pac Man goes, I will discuss more on agar.io. My first encounter with agar.io was when I was back in high school. Everyone in my grade used to play this game and how this game works is that you simply log-in to the team server and you can play with your friends that way. This game was developed by  a 19 ear old Matheus Valadares. The concept of the game is to “bulk up” by eating other cells in the game; more specifically, The objective of Agar.io is to grow a cell on a petri dish by swallowing both randomly generated pellets (agar), which slightly increases a cell’s mass, and smaller cells, without being swallowed by larger cells. This game was coded using C++ and javascript.

Here is a link to the game.

Steve Reich – “Clapping Music”

Steve Reich is a contemporary composer that works with generative music. Generative music is music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system. One of Steve Reich’s most famous pieces is “Clapping Music,” (linked above) where he created a rhythm and overlays the same rhythms on top, but one or more eighth notes apart from the original version. The interest and music is created from how the same rhythms interact with each other depending on how much time is spaced in between the two rhythms. The video above shows the rhythm which can be counted as “one two three, one two, one, one two” in which the commas are counted as rests. When shift is called, the rhythm is shifted one eighth note apart from the original and the distance increases until they are both in unison by the end of the clip.

Francis Dhomont – “Citadel Interieure”

Francis Dhomont is a composer in the late 1900’s that focused on composing music that drew from natural sounds. This technique is called Musique concrète which is music created by everyday sounds such as people talking or drawers closing and any sound that we would not normally associate with music production. Utilizing this technique for composition sometimes leads to the final piece to lack melody, harmony, rhythm, and meter. However, this music can tell stories that cannot be told with typical instruments.
His piece “Citadel Interieure,” (linked above) tells a story of a denied reality in a Subterranean Labyrinth, which would be difficult to create the same effect with standard instruments, even with a full orchestra. His innovative compositions evoke new specific emotions that opened new boundaries in the field of music.

Click here to learn more about Generative Music
Click here to learn more about Musique Concrète

I think I want to base my project around something political, because I think art/design can be very political.

Here are two simple projects that help make politics most digestable and visible, and I think that is in the vein of what I want to do.

Trump Tracker by Viren Mohindra

This simple website tracks Trump’s promises and highlights them using a color code, depending on if he broke or kept his promise.

Tracking Trump’s Agenda, Step by Step
This is yet another web-based infographic by the New York Times. It shows a chronological timeline of the president’s actions and how they affect people of different populations. Each piece in the timeline links to an article about the specific event.

Both of these are simple web-apps with very primitive interactions. I appreciate how direct they are and how they make following politics more visual and more accessible. However, I think in order for them to be truly effective, they need to be more personalized to the person accessing them. I plan to move in this direction for my project.

In moving forward with sound installation as a genre, I’ve been looking at several installations. The two which come to mind are Sound Forest, by the Graduate School of Media Design, Keio University, and Rainforest, by David Tudor. Both of these pieces deal with capacitance and physical objects which resonate and become a part of the space, and that’s a quality of installation work that interests me. I’m wondering how I might be able to incorporate interaction with my installation, and perhaps by working on my final project, I may be able to get a sense of how that might be done.

Seven Sets by Santiago Ortiz is related to my projects because it is a visualization of a mathematical concept using color. It is basically the answer to the question “how many subsets are there of a set of size 7” (the answer is 2^7) but instead it’s a set of colors and he visualizes a subset as a combination of those colors. The way the information is displayed is very simple, beautiful, and easy to understand.

While this isn’t exactly an art project, sodoku puzzles can be directly analyzed as graph coloring problems as shown here. They are an example of many simple games that can be analyzed as mathematical concepts, which also include the Japanese game Hashiwokakero and even tic-tac-toe.

I will start with Deemo, a game where I got inspiration for the final project from. This game is done by Rayark. This music game allows user to play the correct nodes that correspond with the background music. What I really admire about the project is that it creates a background story for players. The player play the game to help a tree grow, and the growth of the tree helps a little girl in the game. The visual effect and music choice are all great.  I attached an video below demonstrating this game. However, I think the game has one weakness. It might be better if the player were able to do more actions rather than simply pressing the screen at the correct time.

To explore more possible interaction with simple geometries, I looked at project Three Drops by Scott Snibbe. This interactive exhibition allows people to interactive with virtual water in three different ways: showering, stopping water drops from reaching the ground, and attracting water molecules. Even a simple element, water, can exist in many phases. In my project, I will try to incorporate more ways to interactive with the computer program.

Deemo by Rayark

Three Drops by Scott Snibbe. Read more here.

For my final project, I want to create a choose your own adventure game. The idea first came when I was stuck in a rut and could not decide on what to do, so a friend of mine told me that a “choose your own adventure game” would have an interesting ending and would be doable with what I’ve learned from in this class.

Some of the games that immediately came to mind for me are: Undertale, The Stanley Parable, and MUD—but i will just be discussing The Stanley Parable and MUD in this post.

The Stanley Parable is an interactive, fictional PC game designed by Davey Wreden initially, and then designed by both him and Davey Wreden in the official remake. I’ve played choose your own adventure games before, but this was the game that really got me into the genre. I admire not only the interesting and unique story, but its immersing effect on the player that pulls them into a world without using action-packed gameplay; while only being guided by only a narrator, visual elements, and sound. There are numerous endings that creates a replay value since every new decision that is made creates a whole new story. I may be biased since this game bring up a feeling of nostalgia, but I still find it to be one of the best in its genre.

MUD is an online, text-based role-playing game where users interact with the world based on only keywords—no visuals or sound. It is considered to be one of the roots of rpg games and an inspiration for other games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The game had a preprogrammed game, but it allowed multiple players to interact using online chat, player vs player, and interactive fiction. Players would only be able to interact with one another and with the world by typing in commands and reading/viewing descriptions of the environment around them, objects near them, and the other players in the world. This game was incredibly popular, and goes to show that visuals are not always needed to play an interesting and immersive game.

Chris Johnson’s Digital Ecosystems

Gameplay of Tap Tap Fish AbyssRium

In the mobile game Tap Tap Fish AbyssRium the player taps on the rock to generate ‘vitality’ points which the player can use to upgrade certain parts of the aquarium and purchase new fish with. Its marketed as a relaxation game but really is meant to be addictive and encourages in-app purchases for upgrades. I really like the style and fish animations in this game, the movements are realistic, so are the fishes designs except they are made to be a cuter than the real fish they are based on. I wish the game was more relaxing. I really admire the atmosphere in Chris Johnson’s digital ecosystems (they are both unsettling and calming) and how he explores the various kinds of ecosystems and how they are all connected by the presence of a cycle. I think Johnson’s piece is good as an art piece but doesn’t hold as strong as a game with replay-ability.