Games VS Art… SAY WHAT?

How about I propose that they are one-in-the-same and that the only difference is what society has restrictively imposed on yet another thing?

I have been advocating that games are just as much art as a Picasso painting for as long as I could make a decent argument. The greatest purpose, in my opinion, of art is to enact an emotion within the viewer. Weather that emotion be rage, tears, joy, or an epiphany is irrelevant so long as it was brought on by the work. Games enact all of the same emotions but threw a different mean. Games allow the viewer to become a participant of the work, another voice within its creation and perception. Some of the most beautiful, enjoyable, profound and influencing games I have ever played would have been easily allowed in a gallery if they were a series of images. But instead of being mear records of what the artist envisioned, they invited you to journey through their world and moved you in ways that traditional art could only dream of.

Every artist has a distinct style; a specific flare to their work that makes it obvious who created it without even needing a name tag and the same is true for both the creator and the consumer when the art rises to games. Every studio has a style; every game has a feel to it that can only be created by its creators and no one else. Every artist also creates what he loves and creates according to what he wants to see. The same holds true for the designers of games, who are just as passionate for their game as any artist could ever be for their painting.

But the most special quirk of games comes from its change of rolls for the viewer. If you give a hundred artists a camera and tell them to photograph the same still life, they will all come back with similar but different takes on the same thing. This very nature of humanity holds true for the player, now given the opportunity to be the photographer of the still life. Rather than merely the viewer of what another person has created, they are invited to give it their own sprite and style.

Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings

Quite unlike the historical games of the many other artists we covered and researched, Sol LeWitt had a completely different strategy and style that will last far beyond their incarnation. Also unlike most artists Sol LeWitt is best known for the art he has granted everyone the ability to create. His series of Wall Drawings were originally painted by him however recorded in full text as a set of instructions on how to paint one. As such new paintings of his are still being produced despite his death in 2007. These paintings are done by Museums to as low as anyone who can follow a set of instructions.

The following video is of the Art Institute Installations of Sol LeWitt’s wall drawing #1111 painted in 2010.

This is one of Sol LeWitt’s Scribbles which are produce in the same manner as his Wall Drawings, via instructions.

Participatory Art Games

FPS Oakland

Description: Players are paired up in to teams threw a random selection system, this case, matching QR codes that have been randomized. Everyone is then scattered throught the campus and are given a start signal to begin their photo capture match.

Objective: To be the last man standing and or with the most points.

Rules:

• All Scoring is done through the Game Master
• In order to gain points, you must send a photo of an opponent to the game master.
• The game can be played as individuals or in teams.
• Points are awarded as follows
• 1 opponent = 1 point for you, minus 1 for the opponent
• 2 opponents = 3 points for you
• 3+ opponents = the number of opponents plus 2 points

• When you are captured 1 point is subtracted from your points
• The captured subject must be identifiable.
• When the game master receives an identifiable photo, they will send out a text to the photo taker and the captured subject with their updated scores.
• Once you run out of points, you are out of the game.
• If in teams these are the alterations 
•  Points are per team 
•  Capturing multiple people form the same team stacks the points
• 2 opponents on the same team = 3 points for you, and minus 2 for them
• 3+ opponents on the same team = 5+ points for you, and minus 3+ points for them
• Once a team is out of points, that team is out of the game
• Teams are determined randomly via shuffled cards or some anonymous method

• End Game Scenarios
  
  • Last man Standing
  • If there are no opponents left in the game, the one remaining player is the winner
  • Announced by the Game Master
  • Time limit
  • If time limit is reached, the person with the most points is the winner
  • Announced by the game master
  • Time limit is determined by the following
  • 10minuts for any team group less than 5
  • Add 5 minutes per 5 players over 5
  • FBI
  • If the FBI or any government official questions what you are doing, inform the Game Master and run. The Game Master will then inform every one of the situation as he runs for a hiding spot.

Color Match this

Description: participant must color match as close as possible to the image they receive.

Objective: to find a color that closely matches the received color. Once the color has been matched, it is sent along to the next participant.

Rules: once you have "matched" your color (which can be any color within in the image), you send it along to the next individual on the list. Once the game has completed, all images are placed in order to observe its change with each relay.

A Favorite Peace?

I would like to say that it was a difficult thing to determine what my favorite work was because I have created a decent collection of work I loved. However sadly I’m coming from a situation in which I’m trying to decide which peace I’m the least disappointed in.  As many have told me, the creator is normally the most critical of product, however I seem to suffer from perfectionism as no matter how happy I may be with an ease at completion, I’m disgusted by it a week later. But at least on the bright side of things, I'm quite attuned to my shortcomings, and as such, improve by leaps and bounds. (and know a lot of ways on how to improve the following)

For now, I present “The Video That NO BODY wants to watch”
(yes that’s the name of the project LINK)
Title 1: The Video that NO BODY wants to watch
Title 2: Multy Video
Title 3: Video II Final
Date: Produced in April, 2012
Date: composited on, April ‎24, ‎2012
Medium: 12 Apple 24” 16x10 IPS displays in a complete 360 degrees circle, video played and synced across all displays
Physical Dimensions: 11 Apple 24” 16x10 displays, 1 projector (unknown size)
Media Dimensions: 12 16x9 1080p video feeds in panoramic 360 degree field. (effective 23040x1080 resolution)
Tools: Photoshop, Flash, After Effects, Premier Pro, MultiScreener Server & Client, Cannon Rebel T2i, 20lb printer paper, #2 mechanical pencil, flatbed scanner.

Retelling the story of Prometheus, the viewer is guided through a complete 360degree field of animation. Imagery of the many gifts and places Prometheus visited along his path to granting fire to mortals are displayed. Narration of the story is provided and synced with the movement of feet in order to help give the connect that it is Prometheus the viewer is watching as they are guided through the story and the room.

YouTube

Uploaded a compilation of all work produced for the class to YouTube.

Hopefully this upload will finish before the day is over... its set to auto load in here once its finished processing.

you can look at the rest of my fail of a YouTube account too if your interested. will load some stuff form Video Art 2 soon.

Final...

you know, pressing tab on a webpage can be a rather fun tour of the place. well back to not letting my mind do its thing...

Final Project V1.1

Taking photographs of some of my Beanie Babies and then animating them using the pupating tool in after effects to bring them to violence. Overlaying guns in to their hands and simulating a short battle threw animation of the cuddly models mixing the dangers of war and the fuzziness of fluff balls filled with plastic pellets.

just realized that we needed a screen cap for this post (lol)

No idea if this premise is even going to hold true as time and working with stuffed animals at all is killing me. not to mention the lack of stock on hand. wish i had more time to play with them.

Compression 102

In my previous post I went over how visual disparities are introduced to videos from different codecs and their relative effects on the image quality. However I completely missed discussing what to do when faced with needing to input your own numbers and how these many variables can affect the image quality and file size. In Compression 101 I merely used the Adobe Media Encoders .mov quality slider for setting my compression ratios and as what’s been well proven by this class, for some reason most people prefer Final Cut Pro X which lacks most of the quality controls that was covered previously.

Along with covering a more precise method of compression via custom bitrates I will also cover some special situations in which specific codecs and settings should be used. Part #0 Data Compression for dummies I’m going to give this my best effort to explain common Computer file terminology as it pertains to video and media storage.

RAW

-No compression, no formatting, pure data. This isn’t talked about much in amateur Video but is common in professional video.

Lossless

-Lossless compression is the ideal compression scenario. When Losslessly encoded, the content has been perfectly preserved and can be recalled an infinite number of items identically while still being a smaller file size than its RAW uncompressed form.

Lossy

-Lossy compression is what you see daily in your digital life. Television stations, Radio, MP3 and YouTube all utilize a lossy compression system. In lossy compression small portions of data are chucked in order to smooth out the bit stream to allow for greater compression.

Container

-A Container is a blanket format that can contain a number of codecs. Container formats will specify what codecs are supported and their manner of encoding and decoding. Typically they will have support for multiple codecs. An example of this would be .mov which is capable of storing around 32 different codecs.

Codec

-A Codec is a set of instructions (algorithms) that are used to encode and decode data held within a container. MP3 is a container and a codec, but Apple Quick Time Pro is just a codec and is stored in a .mov container.

Part #1 Video Encoder settings

Progressive VS Interlaced

-this ones the most commonly known by people outside of the technological side of video production, however it’s also the least understood for some oddity. Simply put, the P in 720p stands for progressive frames. This means that each frame is rendered entirely and contains the most data/lines of information per frame. The i in 1080i stands for Interlaced. In this situation the displayed image is still a full 1080 vertical pixels, but all frames are all half the stated resolution because the displayed image is derived from two fields of separate data that are alternately updated. Only half of the image (1 field) is of the new frame, the second displayed field comes from the previous field update.

There are 2 fields displayed at all times in i mode and only 1 field displayed in P mode to display a single image. P gives a cleaner image due to the whole image being derived from the same data set.

Constant Bit Rates

-the simplest of all data sorting methods is called “Constant Bit Rate” and just as it says, it’s a constant bit rate. Under this sequencing method, a still image of white is allocated the same data space as an epic clash of light sabers would be.

-Pros

Most reliable (not everything supports variable bit rates) Least likely to flood delivery bandwidth (you won’t have spikes of data requests, instead a constant even flow) Guaranteed quality (what you set is what you get)

-Cons

Oldest Least image quality per byte of data (a blank shot eats the same amount of data as an action shot)

Variable Bit Rates

-as the name implies, “Variable Bit Rate" encoded video has a bit rate that varies. Under this sequencing method, the image is assessed via an extra encode pass to determine its amount of change. From there the encoder will alter the amount of data allocated to the scene according to its amount of change. A shot with a lot of change will be allocated a larger chunk of data space than a shot that is relatively calm and unchanging.

An additional aspect of variable bit rate encoding is the option of 1 pass or 2 pass. This is merely another level of quality control to the encoder. 1 pass will analyze the image once and then begin encoding while 2 pass will check the data twice and average the results before encoding the images. My recommendation is to always use 2 pass encoding, as it won’t increase the file size and can produce better images than 1 pass.

1 pass

-Only a single analysis pass is completed before encoding the video

2 Pass

-Two analysis checks are conducted on the image before encoding the video. File size is the same. Only con is a longer encoding time.

Part #2 Conditional compression

Stop Motion Animation

When compressing stop motion animation directly from a video editor, where a single frame of animation can span more than a single video field (frame), always check “optimize still images” if the codec supports it. This will tell the encoder to check for static imagery that spans more than one field and to then skip updating the subsequent fields it spans over. For example, if a still image has a duration of 2 seconds in a file set to 30 fps, the encoder will generate one 2 second frame instead of 60 frames at 1/30 of a second each. (adobe.com)

That’s it for this entry.