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Senryō is a paper 2.5D action-adventure game inspired by the beat-em-up genre. The game takes place in a mythical painted world inspired by Japanese mythology where the player will use an oversized paintbrush to defeat enemies and clear puzzles. Put the pain in painting.
Inspired by the subterranean mycorrhizal networks that enable communication within communities of plants and trees, Fungus Among Us playfully explores how we can make visible the hidden, subsurface links that connect us when we’re apart. By looking at the symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants, we might learn more about the symbiotic relationships we share with each other, how we build connections, and the way that our roots interweave to create new meanings for our interactions.
Stars of Fate is an interactive generative art experience that visualizes the lifecycle of connections, their bloom and demise. As a traverser of fate, one uses the twirling and swiveling of their physical interface to guide their trail among the stars, all the while making and breaking connections with fellow traversers.
Traffic Jam is a chaotic task-juggling crossing guard game. As the crossing guard, you’ll have to stay on your toes to avoid any accidents! Navigate traffic-heavy crosswalks to help pedestrians cross. Using the tools at your disposal: you can clear obstacles, manage traffic, and if need be – carry pedestrians to safety! You’d better be quick with it – not everyone is willing to wait!
This exhibition highlights of some of the best and most innovative work created by Digital Media students at York University from Fall 2021 through Winter 2022. The selection of works in this exhibition are representative of students from across our program, ranging from years one through four of the Undergraduate program, as well as works from Masters and Ph.D. The works presented here are in a wide variety of mediums and formats. From web-based, to electronic, to mixed reality, the common thread to most of these works is the computational basis in their conceptualization and realization. Most of the works presented here use content that is generated in real-time using algorithms as their creative toolset. All of the works embody computational thinking and aesthetics in their execution that include systems-based methodologies, hybrid art, and interdisciplinary approaches to making art.
This year’s Winter exhibition will focus on how making can lead to a better world. As part of this exhibition we will be showing works that challenge the online medium as a format for presentation and encourage alternative ways of viewing, including AR, VR, interactive, or unconventional presentations of work. How do you imagine our world in a near or distant future? How could we make that world real? Topics explored by works could include: Critical A.I. and Computational Creativity, Climate Futures, Virtual Communities, Speculative Futures, and Algorithms of Hope.
In ‘Volatile Bodies’, two biologically active forms (a tree and a human body) are translated through signals into digital expressions while sharing the same space of temporary presence. Together, they entangle and weave a new form of hybridity, a language, a remote embodied connection, pulsing and driven by living data streams. The artwork explores more profound and volatile chemistries of different lifeforms entering the alternative space of encounter while exchanging signals unaware of each other. It is a conversation that is not spoken but lived and manifested from the core of the bodies and their living environments.
We invite viewers into a shared WebXR world: a fluctuating forest generated from real biometeorological data. Interactions with the trees in this playful world will generate different musical tones, holding space for the possibility of making extemporaneous distributed choral work which is unique to the collective decisions of all participants. A holon, from the Greek holos ‘whole’ and -on ‘part’, is defined as being simultaneously both a whole in and of itself, as well as part of a larger whole. In our real worlds, socially distanced due to the pandemic, we hope to provide a sense of collectivity and shared space in the virtual environment. Please note: Holonic Chorus is available for viewing through WebXR enabled browsers such as Microsoft Edge and through other browsers with WebXR extension installed. Special thanks: Biometeorological data shared generously through project Foresta-Inclusive by Jane Tingley. Foresta-Inclusive is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as the “Environments of Change” Partnership Grant. Thanks also to the School of Art, Media, Performance and Design at York University, Toronto, ON. CA.
A bike ride through Toronto’s waterfront was filmed with a 360 camera, then depth maps were extracted from the footage and transformed into a sequence of brushstrokes in 3D space by a machine learning system.
Earth’s biosphere is an endless cross-species collaboration: fluid, multiple, and ever-shifting. It seems that a new picture of embodiment is emerging, percolating into contemporary conceptions of our bodies and their boundaries. It is difficult to continue to conceive of ourselves as discrete organisms knowing that most of the cells that comprise our body are not human but belong to other species, and that these internal ecologies are constantly evolving through environmental influence. It seems we need to look no farther than ourselves to find interspecies collaboration. As these microbiomes are no longer invisible to us, we are realizing just how permeable the boundaries are and shifting our understanding to the realization that there is no ‘away’ and no ‘other’; every being is interconnected. From the micro to the macro, we contain and are part of worlds within worlds. This project challenges our perception of the exterior and interior, self and other, and encourages new conceptions of vibrantly alive and endlessly permuting ecologies to permeate our imaginations.