artist research

LOCAL ARTISTS

Kelly Lim (kllylmrck)

Kelly uses knitting and crocheting yarn as a medium for her artworks. She describes her artworks as “kimo-kawaii” , translated from Japanese to be grotesque-cute. Thus, her artworks consist of many quirky figures.

http://www.kllylmrck.com/

Teo Yu Siang

Yu Siang is a product /UX designer. In his spare time, he creates artworks that touches the issue of the socio-political situation in Singapore. Other than that, he writes articles for thousands of designers all around the world.

http://www.teoyusiang.com/

Zen Teh

Teh describes herself as an Environmental Artist. She explores the relationship between human behaviour and nature in her art.  She makes use of her proficiency in photography and paintings to create her artworks with great detail towards composition and spatial construction.

https://www.zenteh.com/

OVERSEAS ARTISTS

Vasjen Katro

He is a graphic and UI/UX designer from Albania. In many of his designs in Baugasm, he uses a lot of bright colours, gradients and typography.

http://katro.me/

Ryu Mieno

His artworks features bold designs and typography. He often creates new fonts or characters in his designs, preferring to create something new rather than using existing fonts.

http://mieno-ryu.com/

hyperessay // Rain Room by rAndom International

The rain is a beautiful, natural phenomena that brings hope to many people. I don’t know about you, but I have always dreamed about dancing in the rain, like in the movie “Step Up”.

However, I tried running in the rain before, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. The force at which the rain plummets to the ground, can be quite painful on the skin. Not only that, it can get really difficult to see through the rain.

A group of London-based artist from Random International have created the “Rain Room” which could make dancing, walking or running through the rain much more enjoyable.

The Rain Room allows visitors to experience the sight, sound and smell of a continuous downpour whilst being protected from the rain without the use of an umbrella. The immersive installation uses approximately 2000 liters of filtered, recycled water to create the simulation of a rainfall.  It makes use of 3D motion sensor tracking cameras placed on the ceiling. When human presence is detected, it sends a signal to the water nozzles on the ceilings to stop the flow of water approximately around six-foot radius of the human, leaving them dry.

The installation encourages visitors to become performers and controllers of the art. In the Rain Room, “a seemingly intuitive relationship develops between visitor and artwork, man and machine.” This relationship is an overarching theme in many of their works. They use their art to investigate the human response towards automation.

There is no doubt that the Rain Room relies on the interaction of the audience. The design itself was build for the purpose to encourage audience to interact with the artwork. The artist created a two-way communication channel between the audience and machine, where the location of the audience detected by the 3D motion sensor tracking cameras informs the water nozzles to stop the flow of water. Every time the audience move, a new signal is being sent. Making it a form of behavioural art where it is responsive to the actions of the audience. Thus, the audience become the subject of the artwork.

Essentially, the artwork remains at a standstill without audience’s interaction, making the audience a crucial factor in an artwork. By allowing the audience to take part in the artwork, they are not only viewers but somewhat become artists themselves. In my opinion, I think that is why people are so intrigued by interactive installations. As compared to viewing a completed painting, people naturally gravitate towards art where they can add meaning to it.

Interestingly, the artist embraces the idea of entropy. Knowing that the machine they build isn’t perfect, they encourage audience to attempt to outrun the machine. In one of their interviews, they mentioned how they found it interesting to hear the comments of audiences regarding the malfunctions of the Rain Room when it let slips a drop of water on their heads.

“That is a really typical natural thing with machines. When algorithms become physical, you encounter all their physical messiness and their imperfections.”

Never actually having visited the installation, nonetheless, I can presume that it is an immersive experience. The multi-sensory experience is what allows for such an immersive experience. The Rain Room is not only a visual experience, but it deals with sounds, smells and touch. The ability for the audience to control the artwork adds to the immersive experience of the Rain Room.

Image from https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/725487/PlayStation-VR-games-list-PSVR-reviews

As compared to a virtual or augmented reality where audience have to put something on, the Rain Room connects with the physical self rather than the conscious mind. The audience is physically present inside the artwork without any equipment that they have to put on. In some way, I think this allows for a very real experience that VR may not be able to offer. For example, some graphics of a VR game does not resemble the real world, hence you’ll be able to differentiate between what is real and what is not. However, with the Rain Room, because it is happening in real time and space, the immersive experience is extended.

The Rain Room is a perfect example of how there is a shift in art towards audience participation or interaction with the use of digital technology. The trend towards making use of technology in artworks is growing exponentially. As we studied the History of Interactive Design, we see how people in the past made use of the advancement of technology to create a different experience in art such as the Sensorama, Aspen Movie Map, Osmose, and many more. With the continued advancement of technology, interactive art will also progress together. In my opinion, we are starting to see a revolution of interactive art in the art world. It is only the beginning, and in the future, we could possibly see interactive art revolutionize the world.

References

https://www.random-international.com/rain-room-2012

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/art/dancing-in-the-rain-at-sharjah-art-foundation-s-rain-room-1.726207

http://www.digitalmeetsculture.net/article/rain-room-at-londons-barbican/

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/1352

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/los-angeles-rain-room-180957095/

obscure // processing

A 2D platformer game which depicts the story of a little girl who has to escape her nightmare by following the light and also avoiding the Obscure.

Players control the girl by using the left and right arrow keyboard to move and spacebar to jump. To win, players must collect all 15 lights and avoid falling into the hole or touching the obscure.

LIMBO

Limbo is a puzzle-platform game released in 2010 by Playdead. I drew inspiration from the dark, shadowy graphics of the game. This was also one of the games that made me want to create my own platformer game.

Super Mario

Super Mario, a game familiar to everyone of all ages. Even though I really wish to recreate the same type of terrain as in Limbo, I figured that because I was still new with Programming and due to the limited time, I decided to go for a GRID MAP style similar to Super Mario.

Obscurial

I’m a big fan of the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beast franchise. Thus, a character in the Fantastic Beast series became my inspiration for the “enemy” in my game.

The Obscurial can be described as:

“a young wizard or witch who developed a dark parasitical magical force, known as an Obscurus, as a result of their magic being suppressed through psychological or physical abuse.”

“In this state, they are enormously destructive to their surroundings, to the point of causing objects to levitate or break without physically being in contact with them. This notably causes damage to structures and objects near the host.”

Thus, I created the Obscure, the enemy of the game where players “die” when they touch it.

 

Graphics

Using Illustrator and Photoshop, I created the various graphics needed.

Grid Map Plotting

Since I was creating a grid map, I did a mock up of how I wanted the entire map to look like. Using 80 (W) by 12 (H) grids in 50×50 pixel square, I plotted the positions of the girl, light, obscure, platforms and holes on the floor.

Programming

This was one of the biggest headache. Being new to Programming, and challenging myself to create a game was absolutely scary.

Thankfully, I found an existing code that I could use as a reference. Link to download the reference code here: Original Code.

 

Using the code as a basis, I transformed it to make it into my own game. You can find the final code here: Obscure Code.

Plotting

Original Code

Obscure Code

With the help of the grid map I created, I was able to identify what tiles I required. Thus, I created the necessary tiles and plotted it into the start_Grid function.

To be completely honest, I think there could have been a much simpler and easier way of doing the map, but I didn’t really know of any other methods.

Filling TILES

Original Code

Obscure Code

In the original code, the tiles were filled with rectangle shapes. For Obscure, I wanted to fill the tiles with images instead, so I had to figure out how to do that. It took me a couple of days to figure out, but thankfully after taking a break from the code for a while, I managed to find the way.

Collision

Original Code

Obscure Code

With a new obstacle; Obscure, I had to configure the code so that when the any part of the player touches the new obstacles, they’ll automatically restart from the starting position.

Overall, pretty proud of what I made. Of course, there is still so much more I can work on and improve, but I’m excited to continue learning and seeing what I can make in the future. Definitely will try creating more games (from scratch)!