Category: LookingOutwards-01

Cao Fei’s RMB City, 2008

Cao Fei’s RMB City, 2008 is a virtual adaptation of China’s urban landscape, where audiences are players with a personalized avatar. Cao Fei features landmarks that are symbols of China’s prosperity in her virtual world, providing a land of open possibilities, yet she presents them in ruins to reveal the harsh realities of China’s industrial growth.

One of the main elements of the work that I admire is its continual evolution as users build their own desires in this virtual utopia and are updated with new events that mimick the transformations in China in real life. More interestingly, such interplay between the real and the virtual is able to successfully construct a cyber-space where residents carry out lives satisfying their fantasies and escape harsh realities. I also admire the programming of the movement of the avatar panning the environment, tilting its head, and walking around, which resembles human behaviour and provides a higher element of virtual life and immersion of the environment. RMB City also features background sounds that often reflect the loud constructions of a developing urban city, as one would in real life. This work seems to stem from some of her previous works that explore China’s cosplay culture and the popularity of gaming in the younger generations and the routine of waking up and immersing oneself in the fictional realm.

The video attached goes deeper into how Cao Fei built RMB City:

Shape of the World is a single-player video game that allows the player to explore procedurally generated, beautiful, and colorful ecosystems. This game aims to encourage curiosity and a sense of being comfortably lost in an immersive and interactive landscape that constantly changes as the player moves so that even if they return to the same spot, the environment is different. I find this project inspirational because of it’s simplistic yet radiating style and because what seems to be painstakingly created landscapes are actually procedurally made.

I have not played the game myself, so I can’t touch upon critiques for the project, but I believe that the project effectively accomplished what the creators wanted it to accomplish: a relaxing journey. The lead developer and artist, Stu Maxwell, was inspired to create Shape of the World after playing Journey, Flower, Windosill, and 140. These games full of exploration and whimsical style as well as Stu’s own love of wandering prompted him to use Unreal Engine 4 to develop Shape of the World.

Shape of the World on Steam

Shape of the World Website

One of my favorite video game series from my childhood is Riddle School, a point-and-click game where you have to solve little puzzles (or, I suppose, riddles) to break out of school.

I admire it so much— not just for the nostalgia— but for its ability to take such simple artwork and (in the grand scheme of modern gaming) simple code and make something really memorable and rich with lore. This is exactly the kind of game I want to be able to make.

The art, animation, and programming is done entirely by JonBro (now Jonochrome), and music is by Pepsileo and Cheshyre. Jonochrome was inspired by Pico’s School by Tom Fulp, and he created this game as a non-violent spoof of it. It was made with Adobe Flash (rest in sweet peace).

You can play the first game in the series here. If you continue with it, there are some really crazy plot-twists.

One interactive art piece I admire is Nikolas Diamant’s MoCap Head.

This project sticks out to me because I think it is an example of the perfect mix of fine art + computer science that is appealing to audiences including and beyond the fields of art and of computer science. It is visually very charming and satisfying and is very computationally impressive, but it is not so distant and unappealing to the average person. Additionally, I am drawn to this piece because it is made with programs and languages I am somewhat comfortable with (Blender, blender python). It inspires me to take my interest in 3D rendering a step further by learning bpy.

I think Nik made the project himself with perhaps some help from Golan. I am assuming it was made for a class, so it probably took a week or two to make.