Interactive Revolution
When you look at the three games consoles this generation the most mysterious, pre-launch, had to have been Nintendo’s “Revolution”. There was a lot of speculation to what this machine could actually do and some of the prospects really gave an insight as to what the future might eventually hold for gaming. The most highly speculated theory was that it was going to be a virtual reality headset. Mock ups started appearing on the internet very similar to this:
The future?
Of course the mystery was then revealed as wireless, motion sensing controllers, which is still a major leap forward from standard wireless controllers.
Sony have started looking into the possibility of fully realised 3D gaming environments and this was one of their most recent demos:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/01/ces-2009-sony-teases-with-high-quality-ps3-3d.ars
The CAVE and Panoramic photography
After seeing a demonstration of The CAVE and the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ride at Alton Towers, plus the brief discussion on rotating panoramic photography and cameras, i started thinking more about my artefact and how I could utilise technology like that to make my piece really stand out.
My piece so far involves finding buttons on single images to try and find evidence. The pictures are just linked to each other as separate scenes. But what if i could take a photo of a real hotel room with a fully rotating 360 degree panoramic camera and use that single 3D photo as the crime scene?
You could search an entire room without having to click on “left” and “right” arrow buttons to rotate around the room. If i could make that happen I see it being similar to an interactive stadium tour where you can look around a building using the arrow keys and sometimes interacting with objects around you.
Emirates Stadium
I think this type of technology is well suited to what i’m doing and could really bring my artifact to life. Although it is too late no to look into the possibility of it, I alteast know that if i was going to add to my artifact just for the sake of it, this is a route I could go down.
Murder and crime!
Today i changed my idea substantially and now have onei’m really happy with. The premise is that you play the role of a detective on a case and are put in the middle of a crime scene to gather clues and evidence on the case. I think with this there can be a complex narrative without trying to be too ambitous but i am still away of my limitations such as time constraints and my abilties in Flash. My inspiration came when i was drawing up a storyboard for an idea i was going to elaborate on involving a prince saving a princess from a dungeon. But my drawing of a prince looked more like a man in a suit so i decided to work with it and thought that a noir style detective game could work really well as an interactive piece. I thought back especially to the following:
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, a visual novel-type adventure game by Capcom and released in March 2006. The gameplay proved very influencial in my idea as you have to go to crime scenes looking for evidence and talking to witnesses but it’s the way you have to find clues that was my focal point. Although i couldnt find any gameplay footage from the Phoenix Wright games, there are games similar to it and here is a trailer for one with the gameplay i am talking about at the end:
The theme is very similar to what i hope to achieve through the use of music and stylish visuals. Hotel Dusk has a very noir feel to it and that, i think, is evident from the trailer. I hope to find music similar to help enforce the atmosphere of the piece and for visuals i was thinking CSI style establishing shots as they have became a signature for the show and for good reason. They look good and add something to the show. NOTE: below it is only the first 20 secs of the video i am interested in. How they give you different shots of vegas. That’s the style i would use to establish a location in my piece and put my part of moving image in aswell.
Choice in our popular media..
The idea of choice and he consequences of choice are put forward in many forms of interactive media but, for me, this is more apparent in video games. Over this winter period, so far, there have been two games that have really stood out for offering players the idea of “choice” and “free-roaming”.
Fallout 3 is an action role-playing game released towards the end of October by Bethesda Game Studios. The game promotes the aspect of free roaming heavily and allows you to go where you want, when you want. The game world is LARGE so this can seem daunting but after a few all nighters you get the hang of roaming the wastelands. Choice is key in this game. Dialogue with NPCs (none playable characters) is a game itself as you can decide what you want to say. Saying certain things to certain people can have different effects on your “Karma”. This is your allegiance to Good or Bad. The system works well and really allows you to take on the persona of who your are playing as, giving you a real feeling of immersion. You are forced to create your own person and abilities depending on how YOU want to play the game. This game wants you to become part of the game by giving you a lot of input and control into your character and their interaction in the world around them.
The choices in dialogue to whether you want to align yourself to the force of Good or Bad really makes the game what it is and, for me, has given me some strong memories, which is something a game has failed to for a long time. I feel games don’t stand out the way they used to but that just may be my interest in them dying, however this game slided that back.
Early on in the character’s life, you are bullied by a boy but later have the choice to save his mother being killed by mutated cockroaches. I actually had to think twice about helping this guy, which shows how important character development is but i decided to help him. These choices you make involve you in the game and it doesnt feel like a bland repetative passing of time. You are being involved in a story that in effect you can shape. That is the power of immersion.
Another game similar to this is Lionhead’s Fable 2, released around the end of October. Another action role-playing game that sees you immerse yourself in a well thought out story but with the option to create your own. Similar to the game above, Fable 2 offers the player choices that in effect alter the reality around you. The choices of Good and Evil are more apparent in this game as your choices have a direct influence on your appearance and how none playable characters interact with you.
One of the situations that really made me think was when my character had to go undercover to the base of the main antagonist. In his tower he had many slaves looked up in cages starving. While undercover you have the chance to feed the starving slaves but at the expense of experience. Experience in the game is used to acquire new moves and abilities so it was a hard choice and made me feel guilty as i opted not to help the slaves! Yet again an example of how this type of media can really immerse us in an interactive world using different methods of choice.
These two games came to mind after we did an exercise on narrative and how narratives can branch out to different outcomes by the choices we make. For my final piece i wanted to do something similar and i will be in a way but this is one of the directions i wanted to go and was the basis for a couple of my ideas.
David Lynch’s The Alphabet
“The Alphabet Combines animation and live action; A simple narrative structure relating a symbolically rendered expression of childhood and aging. (4 minutes)
The idea for “The Alphabet” came from Lynch’s wife, Peggy Reavey, a painter whose niece, according to Lynch in Chris Rodley’s Lynch on Lynch book, “was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that’s sort of what started ‘The Alphabet’ going.” Based on the merits of this short film.”
The Alphabet is a good example of a surrealist film based on dreams and is really good inspiration for what i hope to make for my final project. The film is quite dark and twisted, which makes it really powerful, in that it has the power to freak people out if they are susceptible to it. As stated above the inspiration for the short film came from Lynch’s wife’s niece saying the alphabet in a tormented way, which can only spark intrigue in the subject of dreams even more. This is one of the reasons i want to do something on dreams as i think they offer a lot to us not only creatively but in our subconscious mind.
One of the friendlier creatures from Pan's labyrinth...
When i first saw it i thought one of the monster’s really reminded me of a monster from Pan’s labyrinth, which is a film based on fairy tales so i am starting to like the idea of surrealism and fairy tales linking in a dream world. This is something i will take forward for consideration next term when i hopefully take my memory film on dreams into production.
Dreams and Power
For my power artefact i will get an account of somebodies dream as an audio piece. I have been researching dreams quite heavily and would like to move my work towards a surrealist film around the matter if i can and think that the debate around dreams is really interesting as no one has a solid reason for why we dream. There is still alot of mystery around the subject and i like alot of the research going on especially in the psychological area so want to explore that side of dreams and hope this audio piece can capture some of that. Dreams are very vivid visually and i have already done a film based on dreams but i think it would be interesting to take that element away and see if it works as well.
Further reflecting on my Memory Artefact…
Because the film i want to make on dreams doesn’treally have a narrative it is my job to make the film connect in some way to people. I tried doing that by putting in the feeling of unexpected locations into my film. Thats something i always remember about dreams as one minute you can be in one place then in another. I get what was said in that i should include themes that help connect viewers to what they are seeing but now just need to choose the best one. From a storytelling point of view i’d like to explore the power of memories in dreams. So using my artefact as a template, when the character wakes up out of his bed he relives one of his life memories through his dream. Each scene is a different memory.
For example the first scene he wakes and finds a key somewhere in the bedroom. A small box appears somewhere in room, which our character opens with the key they have found. In the box there is a picture of, let’s say children. Our character then teleports to into the picture and finds the next key that takes him to another location by interacting somehow with the memories he is reliving. This is to explore the idea of familiar faces in dreams and linking that to the memories we have of them.
I personally think dreams do have an influence on our lives and i think this in conclusion to what i have read. There are strong links between dreams and the subconscious and i believe there things that we do that are started in the subconscious. Many believe the subconscious is a powerful playground where our deepest desires are thought up and i think there is some truth to that. Our subconscious is somewhere in our mind that isn’t effected by the laws of man or by ethics. Where ANYTHING can happen.
I made the dream a little creepier then normal but not quite a nightmare. I didnt want it to turn out like a nightmare but i think the lack of music didnt help. I think there is a thin line between dreams and nightmares. When you realise you are in a dream there is nothing to show you whether you are in a dream or a nightmare. The dream unfolds into one or another. The inclusion of a creepy element for the artefact came from something i read on dreams in the summer. We often forget dreams when we wake up and only remember dreams if they include something that shocks us. Something similar to the idea of the spectacle, that burns an image in our minds for something fantastic or shocking. I went for this by putting the door in. The door provided a contrast, which i hope stood out and had this same ”burning” quality to it. The door was intended to be the nightmarish or creepy part of the artefact to stand out from the alice in wonderland, exploration type happy dream. If i take this forward i would use something similiar as i agree we only remember what shocks us in dreams and stands out.
Memory artefact: The Dream Door
The thinking behind this was to make a video with a dream like quality to it. I tried going for a surrealist approach by not having a clear narrative and letting the audience take from the video what they will. I could have made this video a lot better then it was but didn’t have the time to get some original music for piece. I would have used quite eerie music as the dream is meant to be a little on the eerie side. High pitched sound effects would have been good for all the quick cuts to make them a bit more shocking and creepy.
Dreams are an interesting subject as there is a lot of debate to the meaning of dreams and their purpose to us. This is where my inspiration came from. During the summer i looked at some surrealist work, which made me research more on dreams. Theorists argue about what dreams mean but many agree that dreams are linked to the subconscious. Surrealists used this as their inspiration and set out to make work using their dormant subconscious thinkings. Dreams are also very non-linear and have strange content, which is something i tried to get across in my artefact. I liked the idea of teleporting in your own dreams. At first you could be in a car then next thing you know you are 30,000 feet in the air flying. I tried to copy this in my film by having the character teleport from his room to a field instantly. I would be very interested to take this project further as i think there is a lot I could improve on to make it a strong piece.
Initial memory idea…
From what I’ve been researching I think an experimental film on dreams could be a solid idea as it gives me a lot of freedom to what I can put in. I’ve taken influence from what I’ve read on surrealism through the summer and the artists I’ve been looking at like Vidya Gastaldon. Work that has a very hallucinatory style to it. The film itself would be more realistic in that sense as there will be no nightmarish creatures or anything to that degree. The film would seem very strange though as the scenes will seem quite random. The link to memory would be how familiar places and people pop up in dreams so I’ll look to incorporate that into my film.
Recent views on spectacle
As I said in an earlier post, my views on spectacle have changed significantly since producing my artefact on the subject a week or so back.
Spectacle lodges in the memory
- It is distinctive
- Out of the ordinary
- Different from everyday life
- Very memory based and link to vivid images.
We remember things that are different as they stick out. They are the very opposite of regular and normal.
Will Barton explained that spectacle gives us the illusion of participation but is something we are not actually part of. An example of this would be a football match, where we feel emotionally attached to our team and feel affected by their winning or losing but have no control over the situation. We watch as a spectator and have no input on the situation yet we are hurt when they lose and feel like we are on a journey with the team. The spectacle of football is also a good analogy to how people like to do things in groups. We go to a football match not only to support our team but to belong within a community. By wearing the same coloured jerseys and chanting in unison. This is something supported by Gustave Le Bon in his book Propaganda.
Spectacle can be used by the powerful to gain influence over the mob. Evidence of this goes as far back as Ancient Rome where games we held in the Colosseum, much to the delight of the Roman people. Not only that but in more recent times, Germany in the time of Hitler. His intentions were horrible but through spectacle he gained influence over the German people. There was nothing sensible about what the Nazis were trying to do but they swept an entire nation off their feet.
Spectacle can also have political motives. Spectacle is usually – but not always – made by the powerful for the consumption of the public. Those not of power. The most obvious form of spectacle created by the powerful would be “terrorist atrocities”. The coverage of that has definitely became a large spectacle in our society. At the same time spectacle can be used by those without power to make claims about the powerful. We see this very regularly in things like rallies and protests.
Police supervising a protest
I like the identity side of spectacle most so would adapt that into my idea from the artefact to expand it. I mentioned some of the things I wanted to do and change in the reflection.
