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R.I.G. (Rez Ikaruga Gradius) is a video of three games played simultaneously through one video connection. The idea for this project was found by accident. I had ordered a shared S-Video cable from Hong Kong, the basic use being to connect multiple consoles up to a TV through one S-Video connection. This worked as intended, however, when two systems happened to be on at the same time, they both would attempt to display data on the screen, resulting in very weird video effects and overlaying sound.
The idea was to try three different games for three different systems and attempt to play them at the same time to see what effects were produced. I immediately focused on shooters because I own many for different systems. I ended up picking Rez for Dreamcast, Ikaruga for Gamecube, and Gradius V for Playstation 2. This had the added benefit of each shooter scrolling on a different axis. Gradius on the X axis, Ikaruga on the Y axis and Rez on the Z axis.
Play was done rather sporadically, using both hands and feet, and was basically done blind given the disorienting output that was produced. Several takes were made before the results were satisfactory. Footage was digitized via a Canopus Firewire video converter.
The footage shown on Assembler is a shorter and lower quality version of the original footage, which is in DV. This had to be done because of the rather large file size of this video (550MB and 2 minutes, 40 seconds in length).
Art on Call was funded by an IMLS National Leadership grant to explore the feasibility of cell phone-based interactive voice response (IVR) technology as an alternative to traditional audio tour systems. It contained more than 150 audio segments on 94 works of art, including pieces in the Walker Art Center galleries and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, films screenings, and architectural projects.
All audio files can be accessed via phone or online, downloaded as a precompiled MP3 audio tour or via a simple browse interface. This same content was incorporated into the Picasso and American Art iPod audio tour. This was the first Walker website to use AJAX for content filtering and delivery.
The Walker Art Center encompases five programs, Design, Film/Video, New Media, Performing Arts and Visual Arts. Each of these program web sites included a similar IA/UX layout, but each had a different design theme. These themes were carried throughout all branding used by each program on the rest of their online indentity, including blogs, email blasts and the Walker Channel.
Expanding on the ideas started by people like Ben Fry and numerous emulation authors, ROM Color visually maps the data of Nintendo Entertainment System ROMs. However, instead of only constructing sprite data, ROM Color paints a picture of the entire ROM contents; the sprites, music and logic of an entire game.
NES sprite data is composed of two sets of sprite "tiles". One can think of these as "positive" and "negative", that when put together create a third space, a "neutral" space that's a combination of the two tiles. While code and music data do not share these same properties, using the same effect on them gives interesting results. Add unique colors for each type of space, and you have a 4-color visual representation of the exact game that's playable on a regular NES.
Along with playing the original games, ROM Color is yet another means of experiencing them, in a way that was never intended by the original authors. While the output is not something one could interact with, the method for creating it is the same; computation done on machine code to produce visual output of said code.
The New Media Initiatives blog, one of several designed for Walker Art Center, was designed as a throwback to old school Net.Art design sense. It was featured in the book Fresher Styles for Web Designers.
