This past weekend I went to see Sleep No More. The show, which takes place in New York’s “McKittrick Hotel” is an immersive theater experience. The audience, wearing masks, explores a hundred rooms spread over seven floors — you open drawers, examine props, follow actors around, and generally try to figure out what’s going on. I left not really understanding what had happened (the show is based on Macbeth) because it’s pretty difficult to be…
 
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One of my favorite pieces at the Cooper Hewitt 2006 National Design Triennial was ”SnowWorld.” It was beautiful, absorbing, and other-worldly. The basic concept and execution are pretty simple… Wearing VR goggles, you fly through a snowy landscape and throw snowballs at woolly mammoths and penguins, while listening to Paul Simon’s “Graceland.” But the purpose of the piece is to help relieve pain of burn victims, by distracting them from the reality of actual treatment….
 
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I love L.A. And when the game L.A. Noire was recently released I was first in line to get a copy. It’s a fantastic recreation of Los Angeles in the 1940′s. So I’m really happy that Simon Wood, who was the production designer for the game at Team Bondi, was able to talk about what’s involved in the design of such a title… Q: What is your background? It’s a journey… I was 8 yrs…
 
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A game that self-destructs — both visually and structurally — as you play it. And once it’s done, the executable file no longer works. GlitchHiker was created for Global Game Jam on the theme “Extinction.” People could play the game at the event, but eventually it self-destructed — never playable again. All that remains is a video of the gameplay. There is more info at Create Digital Motion and Vlambeer. As well as the game’s…
 
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Warning: This post may destroy any credibility I may have. But it’s not all bad — I get to post a picture of my dog! What does it mean for animals to interact with digital media? Do our pets care about our phones or computers? Our dog Suki (@suki_the_dog) seems completely oblivious to screen-based media. Sure, she may paw at my laptop, but that’s just to get my attention. The TV can blast away and…
 
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Ok – so at first “codebending” is going to seem like a pretty weird idea and little more than a fun geeky art hack. But it’s way smarter than “just” that. Illucia is a codebending instrument from Paper Kettle that allows the user (performer?) to connect different software programs together and control their interactions. It’s mostly games — like “Soviet Life Sequencer” that combines Tetris with Conway’s

Nintendo’s 3DS Augmented Reality games look pretty cool. You place AR cards down, and the handheld gives you a magic view. Nothing especially new, but it’s beautifully done and looks quite responsive.  The Archery game, shown here, looks great. It makes me want one (Link via Engadget.)

When the iPad was released last year, there were several titles that had strong echos of earlier days of interactive CD-ROMs. Relaxing on a sofa and exploring a new world was much more enjoyable than sitting at the computer where the sense of wonder and adventure quickly transformed into frustration and an eagerness to relax elsewhere. So it’s great to see a title from “back in the day” get reissued and brought, sensitively, up-to-date for…
 
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As museums struggle to find new ways to attract visitors and engage them, London’s Tate Modern has a pretty cool idea… use game-play to make museum-going more fun. How? With their iPhone app Tate Trumps. With the app, visitors: roam the gallery looking for artworks you think will score highly in one of three modes. In Battle mode, you need to ask yourself the question, “If this artwork came to life, how good would it…
 
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I’m going reveal my geeky roots… When I was a kid, my friends and I would play Star Trek. Homemade wooden phasers, climbing trees for pretend planets, and creating stories as we went. Not a lot of technology involved — it was just us, goofing around, having fun. I’m not sure I could convince my friends today to play it, but Artemis may be close to the modern equivalent. Artemis simulates a spaceship bridge by…
 
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