Play The Path at GDC!

We will be in San Francisco next week, attending the Game Developers Conference. A playable demo of The Path will be available from Wednesday to Friday at the Independent Games Festival pavilion in the expo (North Hall 5138). The IGF award ceremony is on Wednesday evening. The Path is nominated in the “Excellence in Visual Art” category. Fingers crossed!

If you find yourself at the conference, be sure to come and say hello!

For those who stay at home, here’s some work-in-progress gameplay footage to tide you over:

High Definition video is available here.

The Kiss available for download

We have made the remake of our 2001 project “The Kiss: Incorporator” available for download. This version was made for an exhibition in the Flemish Parliament, curated by Muhka’s Edwin Carels.

“The Kiss: Incorporator” is made with a 3D scan of our naked bodies, kissing. The errors produced by the scanning technology expecting to find a single body, form an essential part of the piece. The result is a single mesh of two painfully stitched together naked human bodies, welded together in an eternal, devouring kiss. “The Kiss-Incorporator” allows you to navigate the cavernous “ocean of blood” inside of this mesh, through a threedimensial soundscape of industrial and natural sound loops and towards the single eternally beating machine-heart, shared by both bodies.

This project was conceived before we had even thought about making games. It was very much a part of our romantic net.art episode with Entropy8Zuper! The body scans that were the basis for the mesh in the piece, were part of a session we did for another piece, entitled Eden.Garden, which was commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and is now gathering dust on their server. It featured Auriea and I in the roles of Eve and Adam, hence the attire, or lack thereof.

Get The Kiss here!

Exhibition: The Kiss @ Nano Nu

Commissioned by curator Edwin Carels of Muhka Media, we have remade an old experiment in realtime 3D, entitled The Kiss: Incorporator. This remake will be premiered at Nano Nu this weekend, in Brussels. For the occasion of the installation, a special pedestal was made that allows the visitor to navigate through the piece by means of two sturdy joysticks.

See more of the project here:
http://kiss.entropy8zuper.org/the/incorporator

Nano Nu is a two day festival about Nanoscience and Nanotechnology featuring scientific experiments, commercial products and artistic interpretations of the theme. It takes place in the Flemish Parliament on 9 and 10 November 2007. Other artists in the show are Honoré d’O, Peter De Cupere, Louis De Cordier, Nick Ervinck, Angelo Vermeulen, Jodi, Annemie Van Kerckhoven, Dirk Vander Eecken and Patricia De Martelaere.

Endless Forest turns EVIL!

For the occasion of the Velocity Festival of Digital Culture in Lancaster, The Endless Forest will be shrouded in mist during the month of October. Undead deer will be roaring, wolves howling and bats fluttering in preparation for All Hallow’s Eve and Day of the Dead.

You’ll need the latest Endless Forest client (3.1) to trick or treat.

You can be the very center of the mayhem, if you use the machine installed in the Furness & Midland Hall in Carnforth Station in Lancashire. Check here for information.
We’ve heard that opening hours may be “erratic for the first few days of the festival”. From Tuesday 16th to Saturday 3rd November the venue will be open to the public from 10am – 4pm Tuesday to Sunday.

Imagery from IETM

Michael’s 11 year old son provides the following images of the large projection at the IETM conference. The videos below show the 2 game consoles, on which attendees could play the game, in action!

Play Cultures starts today

Play Cultures

Tonight at 7 pm local time, the exhibition Play Cultures starts in the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad (Serbia). It runs until October 25th.

So that makes 4 shows that feature The Endless Forest at the moment? Now wonder it’s getting crowded. 😉

The exhibition “Play Cultures” is an international exhibition that presents contemporary artistic production that uses the language of digital games and shows one possible view of how the genre of digital games can be used in a creative and engaging way. The exhibition consists of standalone games, mods, video works, multiplayer games and interactive storytelling.

Artists:
AES + F (RU), Alon Tzarafi (IL), Afkar Media (SY), Fiambrera (ES), Gonzalo Frasca (UY), Jodi (BE, NL), Molleindustria (IT), Personal Cinema (GR), Persuasive Games (US), Robert Praxmarer (AT), Serious Games Interactive (DK), Tale of Tales (BE), Vladan Joler (RS), Vladimir Todorovic (RS, SG), Urtica (RS)

Organized by napon.org, Institute for Flexible Cultures and Technologies.

VELOCITY Festival of Digital Culture

The Endless Forest will be installed at Carnforth railway station in the UK from 11th October – 3rd November 2007 as part of the VELOCITY festival taking place in Lancaster, UK and other parts along a train route of fun and mystery. We cannot come to the show physically but we’ll be introducing new attractions and activities to The Forest throughout the duration of the show culminating in a spooky finale on Halloween. From the description we were sent, here’s what one can expect:

“…a simple installation in the high vaulted Midland & Furness Hall of the station. Visitors will have to pass through a heavy velvet curtain to enter the space and I’m keen that that this feels just right. The lighting in the hall will mimic the dappled quality of sun or moon light through trees, and there will be a good sound system installed. The piece will be projected onto a screen approx 8’x10′ that will be built especially. Visitors will be able to stand up against the screen which will be floor mounted. The digital projector will be contained within a plinth in the centre of the space with a trackball mouse mounted on the top surface for them to engage with the game. There will of course be a high speed internet connection…

As we build towards Halloween a further physical element will be introduced, 1,000 tiny LED fireflies in the vault above the visitor’s head that will respond to the presence of electomagnetic forces (mobile phones) and the sound of the express trains from London to Glasgow that periodically pass the windows of the hall at great speed! They will live for just 24 hours.”

coolness! If you’re in the UK and interested in taking the train ride more info can be found at their web site.

Also our trailer for The Path will be projected during their Halloween film night. Related to that, it is our understanding that children from the Dukes Youth Arts Center have written little stage play based on The Path’s scenario which will receive it’s premiere from ten minutes before to ten minutes after midnight on Halloween…. ! …. that should be interesting, I’m hoping they put a video of it on YouTube! 😀

Photo Post: Vooruit 25 Years Installation

slideshow!

Tale of Tales retrospective at Furtherfield

Furtherfield are featuring a retrospective of the legendary Net Art duo, Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn*, launching with a major two part interview with Maria Chatzichristodoulou (aka Maria X). This reflects upon their lives, artworks, ideas, creative histories and their journey from Entropy8Zuper! to their current incarnation as a games development studio with a different approach, Tale of Tales.

*that’s us 😉

Read!

Exhibition: Tale of Tales and Entropy8Zuper! at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City

Michael and I, in a previous incarnation, were known as Entropy8Zuper!. Together we made many, many works of interactive art, mostly online. We will be in Mexico City on August 8th giving a performance of some of this older work, in the format of a cinematic “walkthrough” of our largest net artwork, the five chapter saga known as The Godlove Museum. After that, in all its darkness, we will be giving an ABIOGENESIS performance in The Endless Forest for the assembled live audience. So the evening will contain a little bit of heaven and a little bit of hell… and that, in many ways, sums up what we’ve been making for the last 8 years of our lives. Can’t wait to be there in Mexico!

here’s the info:
inmerso [ foro lounge ]
El Cyberlounge del Museo Tamayo arte Contemporáneo
exhibition runs from August 8 to November 11, 2007
http://www.museotamayo.org/inmerso/E8Z/index.htm