Real_TimeMulti

More information about artificial life multimedia system

Rez

Rez, designed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi for Sega Dreamcast and Sony Playstation 2, is described as a musical shooter game. Players enter the cyber world of a sleeping computer network to destroy viruses and awaken the system. Each successful shot leads to the performance of sounds and musical phrases that perform/compose the soundtrack for Rez in real-time as a direct result of the game play. Both the visual and audio experience leads players to feel an immersive, trance-like state that makes the game incredibly captivating. More information on Rez can be found at www.sonicteam.com/rez. Readers may also be interested to see other musically-focused games that require physical or "twitch" skills such as Amplitude, Band Brothers (a.k.a. Jam With the Band or Dai Gassou! Band Brothers), Dance Dance Revolution (a.k.a. Dancing Stage), and Guitar Hero.

Eden

Eden, by Jon McCormack, is described as an "interactive, self-generating, artificial ecosystem." In more general terms, it is a generative installation artwork of sound, light and animation, driven by Artificial Life systems and environmental sensors. Eden situates visitors in a room, standing outside the virtual ecosystem that is represented by a projected, cellular lattice in the room's center. A visitor's presence in the room can impact the ecosystem favorably. Someone standing in a particular location makes the adjacent space more fertile for the creatures, or "sonic agents," that inhabit Eden. The lives of these creatures involve eating, mating, fighting, moving about the environment, and central to the musical character of the piece—singing. In various ways, all of these activities lead to both the visual and aural events that comprise the work.

Intelligent Street

Intelligent Street was a telematic sound installation where users could compose their sound environment through SMS messages sent via mobile phone. The piece was developed in 2003 by Henrik Lörstad, Mark d'Inverno, and John Eacott, with help from the Ambigence Group. Intelligent Street was situated simultaneously at the University of Westminster, London and the Interactive Institute, Piteå, Sweden via live video connection. Users at either end of the connection were able to see and hear the results of their interactions. Using freely-associated, non-musical terms such as "air" or "mellow," participants sent an SMS message to Intelligent Street, and were able to hear how their contribution impacted the overall composition. Simultaneously, all received messages were superimposed over the video feed to create a graphic representation of the audible sounds at any given time. Intelligent Street showed how music could be used to set the mood of a physical space through processes of cooperation and composition across groups of people in distributed environments.