November 7th, 2008 by Pippa
This is one of the coolest prototype games I have seen in aaaaaaaaaages! The Unfinished Swan is a first person shooter - but unlike anything you’ve ever seen. More accurately it’s a first person painting game set in an entirely white (ok, sometime black) world. Players splatter paint to help them find their way through a rather unusual landscape.
Check out the website
here. Theres also a pretty cool video you can watch that demo’s the gameplay.
Posted in Games, digital art | 1 Comment »
October 8th, 2008 by Pippa
Launching at Go-Go Bar, Newtown (cnr Bree/Henry Khumalo)
11 October
21:00
R40 cover
Soft Serve, Soft Serve… What can we say about Soft Serve?
Firstly… It’s crazy. We mean, really crazy. Like some weird space time flux it tests the boundaries of what we think is real.
Follow the band through a warped storyline revolving around ice cream,
featuring a cast of freaks in hoodies who torment the soft serve
obsessed office worker and the Mr Drippy van run by a crazy ice cream
man who extrudes dodgy soft serve from his mouth.
Soft Serve combines music, sound and visuals in a slightly crazy - no -
insane performance that anyone who’s slightly eccentric or just
downright warped in the head will love. Jam to sounds of the ice cream
jingle from your childhood, giggle hysterically as you see what REALLY
goes into soft serve and run in fear of the deformed freaks that will
haunt your dreams for nights to come.
Soft Serve is Jonathan Crossley (guitars), Janus van der Merwe (sax,
keys and voice), Isaac Klawansky (drums), Stefan Henrico (bass) and
Pippa Stalker (animation and visuals).
Pasop Kinders!
Posted in Animation, General, announcements, audio, digital art, performance art, south africa | 1 Comment »
October 3rd, 2008 by Tegan
Just a quick announcement that Nils Eichberg’s digitally manipulated photographs that focus on the history of colour are now part of the permanent public art installation on the new Baragwanath taxi rank.
In July this year the Digital Art Division at the WSOA featured Nils Eichberg and Olivier Schildt in one of our weekly Soiree sessions. They were speaking about their use of computer manipulation and use of colour in a of series of artworks that were on show at Resolution Gallery at the time.
I’m very excited to see Nils’ work as part of an urban public art program.
Photo’s from Nils Eichberg:
Posted in announcements | 1 Comment »
September 21st, 2008 by Tegan
This Tuesday the 23rd of September AVANT CAR GUARD will be giving an open lecture in the Digital Arts Seminar Room. This lecture forms part of a course on Internet Art and Online and Networked Culture offered at the Digital Arts Division of the Wits School of Arts.
Every year we invite local artists to present and discuss work made for online and networked platforms. This year AVANT CAR GUARD will be speaking about the animated gifs (among other things) made for the Artthrob dairy over the past couple of months.
The title of this lecture Gif is great play on the Afrikaans term.
To find the Digital Arts Building please visit this map. You will find us between the WSOA main building and the Nunnery.
Posted in Animation, announcements, south africa, web | No Comments »
September 19th, 2008 by Tegan
I think this is my last post for Ars. (^__^). Apart from meeting with the Leonardo Education Form which the Digital Arts Division of the WSOA is now part of my other meeting, arranged before leaving, was with Zach Lieberman co-developer of openFrameworks.
openFrameworks is an intuitive computer vision and interactive digital media development platform. It is an open source c++ library to make programming in c++ reasonably accessible and easy. I have not used it but am looking forward to trying my hand at it and getting my students busy with it too. Right now no full version is available but Zach and his team have started presenting workshops across the globe and we hope to have them in Johannesburg by mid-next year. If you are based in SA and are interested in this workshop please let me (Tegan) know as soon as possible.
Visiting the openFrameworks website - www.openframeworks.cc you will be able to get an overview of what is possible at with openFrameworks. The OF team (and many more helpers) had set up a OF Lab in the the Ars Foyer in the Brucknerhaus. Here the team built a triple story shell structure to house the OF Lab. The ground floor of this structure acted as the reception so to speak. Here visitors could put a list of words together that would act as an order to the OF Lab team above. Once the order was received - through a hole in the roof - the team would make an interactive piece that somehow represented the order. The OF ground floor also acted as a show and tell space - were the people who had made an order were invited to have a look at it, as well as the public. The 1st and 2nd floors housed the host of volunteer programmers that had joined the team. It looked like alot of fun.
A visitor putting in an ‘order’ at the OF Lab
Visitors in the OF show and tell section
1st floor for developers in the OF Lab - Ars Foyer
Downstairs from the OF Lab in the Ars Foyer were a number of other interactive projects and presentation of the websites that had been selected for the Prix Ars Electronica. A little piece that I really enjoyed as Godmode by Tim Knapen. Here one could draw a silly picture and ‘copy’ it in the Godmode photocopy machine. Once ‘copied’ it became animated and joined the host of other little creatures ‘copied’ before on the roof above the copy machine - all perfectly animated dancing and moving about. There is nothing more satisfying in this piece that seeing how the Godmode will choose to make your silly creature animate.
Draw, copy and make Alive with Godmode.
Posted in announcements | 1 Comment »
