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Nine game worlds become guided meditations in Waldenstein
Gregory Nachmanovitch's 2018 landscape films screen free online as VRAL 139 through Oct. 29, with an interview on the politics of the pastoral.
landscape
Playlist
Watch "A Field Guide of Orbital Melancholy" [Playlist 289]
Ask the satellite twice, get two different lies.
satellite
Cezar Mocan's AI satellite cannot get its story straight
Cezar Mocan built a satellite that cannot agree with itself about the night a toxic lake vanished, and its unreliability turns out to be a design decision.
virtual photography
Carson Lynn: Sculpting with virtual light
Artist Carson Lynn interrogates the boundaries of photography by capturing and manipulating virtual light within game spaces, creating works that question conventional definitions of image-making while exploring queerness in digital landscapes.
News
Birthplace of Ossian explores the artificiality of videogame landscapes
The mountainous terrain in Connor Sherlock’s exploration game Birthplace of Ossian isn’t of this world. I don’t mean that rather than being real, it is virtual—its disconnection has many more layers than that. For starters, its colossal landscape is based on Glen Coe in Scotland, a place that Sherlo
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Dear Esther: Landmark Edition is a delicate, embalmed object
Heterotopias is a series of visual investigations into virtual spaces performed by artist and writer Gareth Damian Martin. /// Videogames have always had something of a preference for islands. These closed spaces, limited by a shoreline, are the perfect conceit for creating an enclosed simulation—an
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To West explores the inherent slowness of vast landscapes
The power of the engine doesn’t matter—it is the landscape which dictates the speed of a train. Some journeys are staccato and breathless, clusters of urban interest barely spaced, laying down a beat over which the melodies of weather and light might play. Others are long drawn-out sighs, exhales as
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Quiet as a Stone will evoke humanity’s architectural awakening
We remarked back in July last year that Richard Whitelock’s upcoming “simple stone throwing game” Quiet as a Stone turned nature into your own personal playground. But it seems a better metaphor would be comparing it to the Mesopotamian mud flats where it is thought humankind’s first buildings were
News
Generate tiny ominous landscapes with this procedural generation toy
Mirror Lake is a strange little thing. Made in a week for Procedural Generation Jam, it creates static black-and-white landscapes, nestled inside a giant patterned bowl and suspended in space. Sometimes the space is dark, dotted with stars and the occasional sun or moon or comet; sometimes it’s a va
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Find peace by gardening the harmonious landscapes of Barmark
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Barmark (Android) BY Stormhatt Studios The characters in Barmark are all damaged in some way. You can see this as they wander the rigidly-cut pastoral landscapes guided by your finger. They a
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Videogame generates worlds based on your webcam, horror ensues
We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror. — Marshall McLuhan Ian MacLarty’s Reflections inspired one of those “whoa the future is here” moments in me. I remember years ago, I felt like I was in the goddamn Jetsons the first time I ever Skyped with a person half way across the world. I
News
Quiet as a Stone turns nature into your own rural playground
For a game with the word “quiet” in the title, Quiet as a Stone is alive with sound, and some incredibly pleasing ones too. There’s the hum of wind and water, the noise of nature uninterrupted, then the clatter of rocks and clay pots shattering as the player interferes with the landscape, and finall