culture – Page 12 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

May 2, 2019

Not quite film, or games … is interactive mixed reality the future of storytelling?

Cutting-edge tech utilising VR and augmented reality is inspiring new narrative forms. And creatives at Sundance festival’s New Frontier are excited

What will storytelling look like in 20 years? Will it still be on your television? Will it printed on paper or projected in 3D? Prophesying the future is hard. But, like fortune telling with tea leaves, sometimes the future can be glimpsed in what’s here right now.

Last year, Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch – a nihilistic choose-your-own-adventure style film with five main endings – introduced Netflix viewers to a term that has only recently entered the TV lexicon: interactive storytelling. Following up-and-coming developer Stefan as he works tirelessly to create the most complex video game of 1984, Bandersnatch calls on the viewer to make his choices. Do you angrily douse your computer in tea or yell at your dad to blow off steam? Do you visit a therapist or shirk the session to follow a mysterious colleague? Sugar Puffs or Frosties? Bandersnatch is an example of a growing trend in storytelling space: too interactive for traditional TV, not quite interactive enough to be a video game.

April 12, 2019

Hito Steyerl: the Serpentine’s Sackler building should be unnamed

Is the German artist’s new show in the Sackler a comment on the family’s alleged links to the opioid crisis? She talks about her medicinal plants – and the facade of well-heeled Kensington

It’s a busy Saturday afternoon in the Serpentine Gallery’s cafe, which has a swooping roof and a striking curved glass facade, courtesy of the architect Zaha Hadid. Insistent music is playing, accompanied by the even more insistent squawk of children lunching with their parents. Waiters pass briskly between tables, carrying bowls of zucchini fries, clam tagliatelle and rainbow cake.

This is the glam version of Kensington, all Fendi bags and Belstaff jackets. But what interests my dining companion, the German artist Hito Steyerl, is what happens when you dig beneath Kensington’s upper crust. Yes, the borough is home to Kensington Palace Gardens, the street that boasts some of the most expensive property in the world, but it’s also home to Grenfell Tower. Not all those who tread the paths of Kensington do so in Prada shoes.

Hito Steyerl: Power Plants is at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, until 6 May.

April 12, 2019

Hito Steyerl: the Serpentine’s Sackler building should be unnamed

Is the German artist’s new show in the Sackler a comment on the family’s alleged links to the opioid crisis? She talks about her medicinal plants – and the facade of well-heeled Kensington

April 11, 2019

Chet Faliszek: ‘You’ve got to make video games for smart, social people’

The legendary writer talks about his journey through the video games industry, from satirical website Old Man Murray through Half-Life and Left 4 Dead to the founding of a new studio

‘I donate to the Guardian, so I’m paying you.” So begins Chet Faliszek as we sit down to lunch in one of the San Francisco hotels that satellite around the Game Developers Conference. One of the industry’s most respected comedy writers and lead developers, the 53-year-old is here to recruit developers to his new studio Stray Bombay, named after his pet cat Boris. With Riot Games veteran and AI expert Dr Kimberly Voll, he is leading a studio that will focus on smart cooperative video games, made for (they say) smart cooperative players.

It quickly becomes clear just how much cooperation has been a vital part of Faliszek’s life, from pivotal relationships growing up in Parma, Cleveland, to a comedy writing double-act at infamous early-internet website Old Man Murray, to his run of successful collaborations at a behemoth developer, Valve. With every key moment in his life, he cites the generosity of another person, a pattern which appears to have informed his entire approach to games development, and the sorts of games he wants to make.

April 10, 2019

‘Much of the experience is meant to be horrible’: Hito Steyerl review

Serpentine Gallery, London
The German artist provides an uneasy ride in a show that starts in the digital realm and leads us towards the difficulties of everyday reality

There is a health and safety warning on one of the apps you must download to get the full augmented reality experience of Hito Steyerl’s Serpentine Gallery project. “In the future, 100% of all humans will die,” Steyerl warns us. “Access this zone at your own risk and don’t complain later.” She forewarns us of trouble, and that adults are advised to treat the experience as a fiction. “Anyone under the age of 19 is safe to understand it as they please, as they can probably deal with it.”

Tart, funny and furious, filled with rants and “semi-poems”, Steyerl’s latest project is difficult to approach. Complex, playful and barbed, her art is leavened by an often snarky humour that softens us up for the sucker punch. She seduces and entertains, only to lead us out of our depth. The first big British show by the German-born artist since her 2014 ICA survey begins in the digital realm and leads us inexorably toward the difficulties of everyday reality. It is not an easy ride.

A Yelp reviewer complains, 'This game is total crap. There’s just a bunch of weirdo AI salads wobbling around'

April 10, 2019

‘Much of the experience is meant to be horrible’: Hito Steyerl review

Serpentine Gallery, London
The German artist provides an uneasy ride in a show that starts in the digital realm and leads us towards the difficulties of everyday reality

April 4, 2019

Tsai Ming-liang: master of long takes and watermelon sex

This ‘slow cinema’ legend has now abandoned all dialogue. As the UK Taiwan film festival kicks off, he talks about his latest work – about a man with neck pain who owns a fish

‘In my childhood, cinema was like going into a temple. Now, it’s more like going into a shopping mall,” says Tsai Ming-liang. Over the course of his nearly 30-year career, the Taiwanese film-maker’s work has moved further and further towards the “temple” end of the spectrum. Often bracketed under the “slow cinema” movement, he is a master of the very long take. His last feature, 2013’s Stray Dogs, included a shot of two people staring at a mural in an abandoned building that lasted over 14 minutes. But despite his shaven head, Tsai is no monk. In the past, his films have featured choreographed musical sequences, surreal comedy, and plenty of sex – gay, straight, solo, even watermelon-incorporating, in the case of 2005’s The Wayward Cloud.

In person, he is unassuming and quick to laugh. “In the past I really cared if people understood my films, but when you grow older, you care less,” says Tsai, who turned 61 last year. “You want to do something to please yourself. I feel like the film industry has trapped film-makers. They tell you you need to have a narrative structure, you need to do things a certain way. They limit the imaginations of film-makers. I often think about, what is the meaning of film? What does film want to say? The simple thing is, film is about images.”

March 26, 2019

Nintendo Labo VR: the Willy Wonka of video games tries virtual reality

A cheerful, endearing approach to VR makes Nintendo’s Labo VR kit a fascinating family prospect

VR was meant to be the future, and it still yet might be, but the current selection of virtual reality devices is in the main expensive, impractical and nausea-inducing. Initially tethered to high-end computers with wires, neither the Oculus Rift nor the HTC Vive VR headsets have yet captured the public imagination as much as that of investors, and lower-end contraptions such as Google Cardboard haven’t offered interesting enough experiences to become popular. Nintendo Labo, on the other hand, shows virtual reality for what it really is, at least right now: an interesting toy. With a 7+ PEGI rating, in contrast to the 12+ recommendation for every other VR device, it has the age suitability to match.

Labo is not the VR device that will finally break through and make the technology ubiquitous, but that’s not what it’s trying to do. Like the other Nintendo Labo kits, released last year for Nintendo Switch, it is an interesting and educational toy aimed at curious children and their families. In the box are sets of cardboard sheets and a game cartridge containing the instructions to fold them into ingenious models. Pop the cart into the Switch, assemble your viewer according to the friendly directions, slot the console into the model, and you have a little working VR headset.

March 26, 2019

Acid test: how psychedelic virtual reality can help end society’s mass bad trip

Cyberdelic VR is being used to treat trauma and even simulate near-death experiences

Human beings have become nothing more than data in flesh suits. That’s the gist of Team Human, the 2018 TED Talk from media theorist Douglas Rushkoff. Certainly, there could be few people who use social media now who don’t feel a sense of captivity.

That makes cybernauts the freedom fighters. The VR artists, academics and scientists gathered in this Brunswick warehouse have contributed to Melbourne’s first “cyberdelic incubator”, hosted by the Australian Psychedelic Society.

March 26, 2019

Acid test: how psychedelic virtual reality can help end society’s mass bad trip

Cyberdelic VR is being used to treat trauma and even simulate near-death experiences