Bonus Feature: Interview with Ian Cheng

Kill Screen magazine Issue #8 is currently available for purchase over here. The theme this time around is virtual reality; probably the most narrowly focused subject the magazine has tackled, but it does offer the chance to examine the technology from past, present, and future perspectives. I've contributed a piece to this latest issue as well, about how the Oculus Rift VR headset could potentially be a democratizing force for creators, the same way Sony's Portapak camcorder was for video art.

For my article I interviewed artist Ian Cheng, who works in a variety of media, digital and physical. I was particularly drawn to Cheng's work because of his use of the Oculus Rift for his piece Entropy Wrangler Cloud in which viewers don the headgear and look around in a world full of floating debris, each with its own weight and momentum, among other characteristics. As a viewer you can only exert minor influence on the objects as they bounce off of and around you. I spoke to Ian over email about Entropy Wrangler Cloud and how the Oculus Rift could fit into the art world. You can check out the full transcript of our conversation below.

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LOW CUTOFF: For starters, just looking to confirm that "Entropy Wrangler Cloud" was the title of the piece you showed at Frieze that used the Oculus Rift. Have you done any work with the Rift since then?

Ian Cheng: Yes, it is called Entropy Wrangler Cloud. The work grew out of a larger series of live simulations I have been making called Entropy Wrangler. It's a set of objects and beings each with assigned with basic properties and behaviors and left in a closed system to influence each other. Entropy Wrangler Cloud takes place within the Entropy Wrangler simulation, but instead of seeing the simulation from an overview perspective, you are within it, one object among the many. The head tracking native to the Oculus is used by a viewer to assert some influence within the ecosystem, but unlike a hero-centric video game, you are an extremely minor influence among many other influences that are out of your control and affect your VR perspective.


LCO: Are there other artists that you know of, specifically outside of the "game" sphere, using the Oculus Rift in their work?

IC: No but I'm sure someone is making a 360 degree live action movie, or a 360 degree porn orgy, or a concert film. I can imagine artists, architects, and landscape designers using the Rift to previsualize an exhibition layout or space. I'm sure the Rift is being used for virtual reality therapy to treat PTSD.


LCO: I'm trying to get a feel for how widespread the influence of the Rift is in the art community, and whether or not it's the sort of device that could explode in popularity the way the handheld camcorder did for video art, or if it's too niche and destined for a quick burn. Any thoughts on this?

IC: The Rift, Avegant Glyph, and other VR devices will have to prove themselves on their own terms in their own markets to simply sustain themselves. As for the world of contemporary art, I believe more and more its task is to develop and act as interface to allow humans to relate and feel non-human experiences. The best art invents inside of us new patterns of feelings that exposes us, beyond rational consciousness, to ecosystems and abstractions that we have no other way of feeling. VR for me is an innovation to facilitate this. Whether Oculus Rift the company evolves to stay in the game or quickly burns in hype fire I have no idea. But as an innovation idea, the idea of sensorially entering a subjective perspective that is not your own, this is here for us to finally use and grow from.


LCO: Also, you hinted at this in the dis interview but it does feel like there's this window of opportunity for Oculus Rift creations prior to it's official launch that won't exist in the same form once it's commercially available. How do you reconcile the novelty of the gallery VR experience with the ideas you seek to convey in the piece itself?

IC: VR as an idea has been marinating inside us for a long time. People are conceptually ready for it. At Frieze London last year, I presented a Entropy Wrangler Cloud using the Rift. Beyond the Rift's novelty, the real trick was designing a comfortable neutral couch, very low to the ground, that helped remove the psychological barrier of stepping into the Rift. Like the way massage tables are designed, or how Freud covered his therapy couch in blankets to allow his patients to feel immersed in comfort and open. By making the Rift experience surrounded in comfortable normality, it was much easier for people to just focus on the experience of the work. The field of normality is really important with any new technology because it is what allows us to relate to its otherwise alien newness. This is usually the job of a marketing department, interface designers, and app makers, but since the Rift has not been officially launched yet and there is so few apps available for it, how this normality field is defined and who defines it is up for grabs.

LCO: It's interesting that you spoke about the couch you used for Entropy Wrangler Cloud and the idea of establishing "comfortable normality" because the Rift is such an enveloping experience that overtakes much of your real-world sensory awareness. Would Entropy Wrangler Cloud lose something essential if it were made widely available for Oculus Rift owners to download and interact with in their homes instead of within your particular installation?

IC: No, not in terms of experience of the actual work. The installation at Frieze was specific to setting the scene and luring one into the experience of the work within the context of the peak attention crisis one is subject to at an art fair like Frieze. At home, comfort and privacy are not a problem. Although it is fun to think about what the ideal furniture for VR really is and how it smells. Your body primes itself before going blind to its context and it continues to sense even when you are consciously engaged in something else.


LCO: Because of its interactivity (even if that just means putting on the headgear), art that uses VR seems very viewer-centric. While it's a long way off from the experience of a video game protagonist, viewers are still given a certain degree of agency to activate virtual spaces. Would you consider those who experience Entropy Wrangler Cloud "viewers," "players," or something else entirely?

IC: With Entropy Wrangler, people experiencing the work are also influencing the work. They are not players like in video games-- where all the action is designed around the experience of the player -- but more agents or influences. The difference is when no one is using the Rift, Entropy Wrangler the simulation continues on. You are then just dead matter to be played with in the eyes of all the other influencing agents inside the simulation.


LCO: It seems like the Oculus Rift has granted a large number of people access to VR development that hadn't dabbled in the field prior. Do you feel that the Rift provided you with an opportunity to work with VR that wasn't otherwise easily available? Was the technology easy to work with?

IC: Yes, both the cultural and technical conditions of entry into VR were too quarantined for me before. Two years ago there wasn't the same ecosystem of support--Unity, a growing audience for VR experiences, the Oculus itself -- to justify the energy and time cost to work with VR. I'm not an engineer, and I've seen too many artists get absorbed into building a technology from scratch that they lose sight of what really matters. As an artist, I have to create a situation for myself where I cannibalize and setup the tools needed with some sweat and effort, and then play can happen with relative fluidity. Whoever invented the idea of APIs had the potential of creative play in mind.

Blips: Wave Racing

Source: What is a Racing Game? On Wave Race 64
Author: Zolani Stewart
Site: The Fengxi Box

Ever since I began reading this essay on Wave Race 64 by Zolani Stewart I've been humming the game's title screen music and fondly remembering this gem of a racing game. In fact it's Wave Race 64's status as a racing game that might prevent it from getting more recognition, but as Stewart notes, it's what the game does within the racing genre that makes it excel as much as it does. There is indeed an element of the sublime at work in the way the jet ski's steer around tight corners, the weight of the watercraft digging into the waves. Wave Race 64 is a beautiful game, and even going back to look at it now, I just think it's pretty. Sure the ocean in a game like Assassin's Creed 4 is going to look more realistic, but it's not a competition for realism, and the sum of Wave Race 64's aesthetic decisions is an upbeat, welcoming place.

Stewart gets into some interesting distinctions between "driving" and "racing" games, and I find the unique distinction with Wave Race 64 to be the open water courses. On these "tracks" the only designation about where to go is the preset rules of the game that ask you to slalom between anchored buoys. In some cases this allows for tremendous shortcuts or the sacrificing of an allowable penalty to cut "corners." I never owned Wave Race 64, but I rented it a lot, to the point where if I bought it, there wouldn't have been much left to do other than beating my own records. However, looking back, I do wish I'd have bought the game for its "driving" aspects. That is, sometimes I just have the urge to get back out on those waves, competitively or not.

Blips: Not From Nothing

Source: The isolation of Metroid Prime reflects its hero’s sense of loss
Author: Nick Wanserski
Site: Gameological

I can't pass up a good article about the Metroid Prime games, so here's another one from Nick Wanserski over at Gameological that ties into their "empty spaces" series. If you've played Metroid Prime or even the original Metroid, you'll already know that emptiness and isolation go hand in hand with those games. Metroid has mostly solid black voids for backgrounds, contains no dialogue, or map, and generally leaves you to fend for yourself. The first Prime game drew most heavily from its predecessors, adapting both environments and gameplay into polygonal spaces, with plenty of silent, contemplative voids to boot.

What Wanserski brings to light that I hadn't really considered in depth is Samus' relationship to her surrogate parents, the Chozo, told through discovered texts and glyphs, as illustrative of Samus attempting to fill in an empty space in her personal history. In a sense, Metroid Prime is the story of an adopted daughter, twice orphaned, seeking to learn about those that raised and took care of her. Of course Samus is also an incredible warrior, so she's on an important space business mission too, but the narrative arc of Samus' relationship with the bizarre planet of her surrogate caretakers always stood out to me as the most memorable aspect of that game.

Blips: Drop the Vase

Source: This Vase Is A Mirror
Author: Tim Schneider
Site: Kill Screen

If you've ever been bewildered by the art market's ever-inflating auction value headlines, consider Tim Schneider's debut piece for Kill Screen an excellent introduction to what the hell is happening there, helpfully framed in the context of video games no less. I won't go into the whole backstory since Schneider does so in the article but there was an incident earlier this year where an artist (un?)ceremoniously broke an Ai Weiwei painted Han dynasty pot while it was on display in a gallery. Everyone in the press seemed eager to note the proposed value of the pot in their assessment of the situation –supposedly about $1 million. As a response, another artist, Grayson Earle, created Ai Weiwei Whoops!, a game which allows players to similarly drop facsimiles of said pots while racking up an obscenely escalating damage assessment in dollars. That's all there is to the game, and Schneider argues that's, in a sense, all there is to the current art market.

The experience of playing Ai Weiwei Whoops! is worth noting here, which Schneider goes into elaborate detail to explain. It's a game that you'll probably play for 30 seconds, maybe a minute tops; not something that is particularly thought provoking out of context. But in conversation with the smashing incident and the larger art market, the "throwaway" nature of the play experience means something all on its own. Ai Weiwei Whoops! isn't a particularly fun game; the pot crashing doesn't even grant a destructive satisfaction, just the matter-of-fact uptick of the perceived dollar amount lost to the void.

Recap: Two5six 2014

This past Friday in Brooklyn, New York, Kill Screen hosted its second annual Two5six conference, bringing together minds from the world of video games with outside voices in related fields. The format was similar to last year's event, but in a different location and, unless I missed it, it was not livestreamed. There were talks about sound design, voice acting, and spatial narrative, among others. Kill Screen founder Jamin Warren moderated the entire 8-hour event, and once again showcased his skills as both an interviewer and a facilitator. I always think it's a shame when there's a panel on the stage and each one of them speaks exclusively to the moderator, but this year at Two5six there were more than a few instances of panelists *gasp* talking to one another.

I wouldn't say anything at Two5six 2014 totally bowled me over, but it was a fun, engaging day of on-stage discussions, off-stage chatting, and some pretty delicious doughnuts. I'd like to reiterate my fondness for the speaker pairings both from audience experience and conference design perspectives. In many cases, I was familiar with the "game" people, their games, and what they think about their games, but was almost universally not aware of the speakers they were setup with. This brought new contextual understanding to the games side of things, while also framing games as part of culture with radio, museums, and experimental film. Plus Kill Screen is actually able to leverage some recognizable names as draws to the conference while insuring they aren't just going to be retreading old material. Kill Screen has already begun recapping many of the talks from the conference on their website, so even if you didn't go, there's a chance to see what you missed.

I'm not sure what I really want from conferences anymore except maybe the opportunity to meet people I don't normally talk to, and I was definitely afforded that opportunity at Two5six. On one hand, the speakers almost all stuck around for most of the conference, open to conversation during breaks or for establishing contact at a later date. On the other, I got to hang out with fellow audience members, particularly other freelance writers, in what became an informal sub-convening of our particular niche in the industry. Two5six affords a certain kinship among people who work in and around games, and it's strength is, at least symbolically, forging those connections outside of just interactive software. It might not seem like must-go, must-see kind of conference, but what is? I imagine you'll get different answers depending on what each person was looking to get out of it. From where I'm sitting, Two5six does a pretty bang-up job of doing what it sets out to do.

Blips: Connected Worlds

Source: The Last Survivors of Meridian 59
Author: Simon Parkin
Site: The New Yorker

I can't claim to have much experience with MMOs, but I am consistently fascinated by the stories told by players of happenings within virtual worlds. For his latest New Yorker piece, Simon Parkin checks in with Meridian 59, a game considered to be the first ever MMO, and talks to some players who have been active in the game for 15 years. As usual with these types of communal environments, it's the people moreso than the battle systems or loot that keeps players coming back, but what I was most intrigued by in Parkin's report was that the style of gameplay in Meridian 59 is given significant credit for maintaining interest in the game.

Particularly, the brutal nature of Meridian 59's world where death means that you can have items taken from you, instead of just a semi-inconvenient respawn point. Attacks can happen anywhere, not just in specifically sanctioned battle arenas or modes. As a result, survival depends on players banding together and looking out for one another. If anything, this sounds quite a bit like recent Early Access sensations DayZ and Rust, where you're dropped into a lawless open world and your survival is contingent on the trustworthiness of the friends you make. It's easy to look back at a game like Meridian 59 and balk at the way traditional MMOs have gone post-WoW, but new games like Rust and DayZ are actually taking some of those old MMO ideas in interesting new directions. Plus, there's an attempt right now to bring Meridian 59 to Steam in the near future, so maybe a triumphant resurgence is in order.

Blips: VR, KRZ, G4C, etc.

Source(s): When will Games For Change actually change / Road to Two5six: Tamas Kemenczy
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

This has been an active week for me on Kill Screen. First off, there was the piece that I wrote about this year's Games For Change Festival, a conference in the midst of self-critique. This was my third time attending G4C and found that some of the more critical talks and opinions were the ones that resonated with me the most. It was my hope that I presented this information in a way that seemed like a fair critique of a system that appeared open and welcoming of critical feedback. I'm also glad I was able to include some quotes from G4C President Asi Burak and I'm thankful for his willingness to contribute.

Next was a short profile of Kentucky Route Zero developer Tamas Kemenczy. Having just completed Act 3, I was extra excited to dive into what exactly makes KRZ tick. While some of my original speculation about the game being grounded in studio art practice did not end up bearing fruit, the rejection of these formalized categories was enough on its own. I'm a recent convert to KRZ, playing it for the first time in preparation for this piece, but I've come out of the experience a staunch advocate for what it's doing with the video game form.

I was assigned the Kemenczy piece because he's speaking at Kill Screen's Two5six conference on Friday, which will also see the launch of Kill Screen's latest print issue. I'll write a separate post once the magazine is freely available for purchase, but the theme is virtual reality, and I wrote a piece for it comparing the democratizing potential of Oculus Rift to that of the original video camcorder, the Sony Portapak. It will be Kill Screen's most focused theme so far, so I'm curious to see how it all turns out (I'm optimistic). They're having a free launch party after the conference where they'll be giving out copies, if you're interested.

Blips: Family Synthesis

Source: Making Fract as a family
Author: Charlie Hall
Site: Polygon

We all know making video games is hard work, but how about making video games, building a company, and starting a family all at the same time? That's exactly what Richard Flanagan and Quynh Nguyen did, founding Phosfiend Systems to create the virtual synthesizer game Fract OSC, all while raising their infant daughter. In a lovingly captured profile over at Polygon, writer Charlie Hall tells the story of Fract from this trio of perspectives, and how Flanagan and Nguyen managed the chaos. At times heartbreaking, and uplifting at others; give it a look.

Having recently played and reviewed Fract OSC, I think all of that effort was worth the final result. As someone who loves electronic music, that there would be a game centered around synthesized audio production, wrapped up in a Myst-like world of music-inspired puzzles sounds like my perfect game. Ultimately Fract isn't perfect, but it does so many unique, stylish things that I'd still consider it a must-play. The game seems squarely aimed at someone like me, but it seems like plenty of folks who are less invested in electronic music have been digging it too. The one thing I'll recommend is that if you're coming from more a music interest than a games one, you might want to keep a guide handy or occasionally ask someone else who's played the game where to go, since many of the exploration systems can be indecipherable to players not in the know.

Blips: Duty Calls

Source: Why Call of Duty Advanced Warfare Probably Shouldn’t Be Called Call of Duty
Author: John Davison
Site: John Davison

I've never played a Call of Duty game, but from what I can tell, the franchise is in need of a dramatic shift to really shake things up. Am I crazy or should the series actually go back in time to WWI or earlier? I'd love to see a game of such scope embrace that kind of restraint; it could be daring. Regardless of my fanciful wishes destined for deaf ears, the latest Call of Duty title has been announced and it's more of the same near-future military stuff, but this time focusing on para-military companies (PMCs). This seems like this could have been an interesting move some 10 years ago, but now it just comes off as reactionary.

And long-time game journalist John Davison has a point that the titular "call of duty" in a game about PMCs rings a bit false. Hell, Activision is even funding a "documentary" that questions the loyalty of PMCs. Nevermind that the film is just a glorified ad for a video game, if the characters in the game aren't actually answering the call of duty to defend their country and are instead motivated by corporate interests, then the title feels somewhat inappropriate. I mean, I get why they're sticking with the name, and why, in 2014, you can't really make a game about the American military without acknowledging the impact of PMCs. And while I understand the logic of putting those two things together, titling that game Call of Duty only makes sense to me as sarcasm, even moreso than before.

Blips: Learning Games

Source: Teacher's Lounge: Insider Views on Games Education
Author: James Brightman
Site: Games Industry International

I've been writing and researching games education a bit more than usual, so when I came across this educator roundtable over at Games Industry International, discussing the current state of game studies at the collegiate level, I had to share. Though the discussion moves quickly, what's here is a pretty great broad overview of what's happening in higher education game studies from 5 of the most prominent programs out there right now.

If there's any general consensus, it's that now is a great time to be interested in learning about games. There are more programs out there than there used to be, and those programs have achieved more stabilized status within their institutions. Game studies programs may be growing, but they're not ubiquitous yet, which actually could provide certain benefits. For one, it means the community is a little smaller (compared to, say, the studio art or creative writing MFA fields), which could lead to a more collaborative educational/post-graduation environment. There also seemed to be some agreement on focusing curricula around student-driven design process, which is very similar in concept to an interdisciplinary arts program, but for games. It's worth a read.

:image via Polygon:

Blips: Making an Impression

Source: Echoing Histories: Impressionism, Indie Games and Artistic Revolutions
Author: Eron Rauch
Site: Video Game Tourism

Let's take a step back from the convoluted arguments about what constitutes a game and what that has to do with art, and instead, let's look at cultural movements in art and games that seem to play out in a similar fashion. That's precisely what Eron Rauch has done in his latest article for Video Game Tourism, comparing the onset of Impressionism in the 1870s and the rise of indie games in the past few years. It's an approach that can really only be made by someone who knows their art history, which Rauch most certainly does, offering insight into the mindset of the typical Salon du Paris patron when confronted with imagery that shakes up the system.

I won't recap the whole thing because I'd rather you check it out for yourself, but I'll tease some of the lines from the opening which are meant to sound like they could be said in reference to indie games now as much as they could have been of uttered of Impressionist paintings back during their time.

“They didn’t even have a jury, that means anyone can have their work seen! How will anyone know what is good?” one man says sloshing his drink slightly in the night air. “Yes, their work is so modest in scale. It’s hardly worth paying attention to.” Gruff nods mingle with the smoke of expensive cigars. “I mean, their subject matter is so banal. They don’t seem to have any grasp of the grand themes of myth and history that tie us all together!” “Yes, they just depict everyday life. People won’t pay money for that!” Each looks to the other, somewhat uneasily, as though they are trying to sniff out a traitor. “Yes, I could respect them more, but it looks so bad, so unfinished - almost like sketches - nothing more than impressions!”

Blips: Just Trying To Help

Source: Games evangelists and naysayers
Author: Brendan Keogh
Site: The Conversation

I'm of a mindset that one should always assume positive intent, certainly in educational contexts, but really in life in general (as much as New York seems dead set on convincing me otherwise). In a recent column for The Conversation, Brendan Keogh pens a thorough takedown of a new initiative by researcher and games advocate Jane McGonigal titled Play, Don't Replay. The thrust of McGonigal's project is to encourage people to play attention-occupying puzzle games like Tetris in the immediate aftermath of traumatic events in order to prevent images from the trauma from settling into a permanent rotation in the brain. These images would normally manifest as a symptom of PTSD, but McGonigal cites an Oxford study that claims that rapid eye-movement games can potentially prevent these negative symptoms from taking hold.

That "potential" is the sticking point for Keogh. He acknowledges the virtues of striving for such human betterment, but claims that there's not enough research to justify responsibly putting such a plan into action. Keogh asserts that "game evangelists" (his term) like McGonigal and the folks over at Games For Change have a vested personal interest in seeing the public perception of video games shift toward seeing games in a positive light. And from Keogh's perspective, he sees Play, Don't Replay as placing games advocacy ahead of the needs of trauma victims. As you might expect, McGonigal has a few retorts to Keogh's piece in the comments where she defends the research behind Play, Don't Replay while also acknowledging how she's always receptive to feedback and has already incorporated several changes due to responses she's received. However, the malleability of some of these variables, specifically that the amount of time one should play the game was switch from 30 minutes to 10 minutes, certainly gives me pause from wanting to take McGonigal's word as gospel. At the very least, I'm interested in seeing further research conducted on the subject though.