Kill Screen Magazine's Blog, page 109

Explore a feminist literary classic in videogame form

Many people are familiar with the late 19th century short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A piece of early feminist and classic American literature, it is a semi-autobiographical captivity narrative about a woman whose “treatment” of her “hysteria” (a non-existent illness commonly assigned to women at the time) leads her to madness. She becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in the room where she is imprisoned, imagining women crawling around in it, and eventually imagining herself to be one of them. As if that wasn’t terrifying enough, Bad Girl Games, a part of MAGIC Spell Studios, has adapted this story into a first person horror game called Charlotte (and it’s not the first videogame adaptation of the story, either). 

the story of Charlotte serves as both a warning and a ray of hope

As you explore the house, selections from The Yellow Wallpaper frame your descent into madness. The people you share the house with pop up and disappear like ghosts, quick to admonish you for any kind of independent thought. But besides the clear retelling of The Yellow Wallpaper, there are also abundant texts and paintings from the 19th century that give context to the story. Through medical texts, etiquette books, erotic paintings, and feminist calls to action, the story is given the meaning that one might understand through research and discussion, but perhaps not with reading the story alone.

Charlotte does not just adapt The Yellow Wallpaper, but adds another dimension: the story of Charlotte A. Perkins (a representation of the original author), the woman who owns the building you are staying in. Her story can only be pieced together through bits of journals and letters scattered throughout the house, and what some of the other inhabitants have to say about her. While everyone you interact with in the game keeps insisting that you must be domestic rather than intellectual for your health, the story of Charlotte serves as both a warning and a ray of hope as to what an independent life could give.

You can download Charlotte over on itch.io.

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The problem with Brutalist web design

Brutalism, because words no longer have meaning, is apparently a big trend in web design. It is, one gathers, a reference to somewhat austere webpages that are not overloaded with fancy baubles and trinkets. In other words, what we are seeing is not Victorian web design. But what about it is Brutalist?

“That question is easier asked than answered,” writes Vox’s Aja Romano, who goes on to answer that it has something to do with a “no frills” approach to websites. This is more or less an extension of Katherine Arcement’s description in The Washington Post last month: “Making websites that look, well … bad. (…) They’re built on imperfect, hand-coded HTML and take their design cues from ’90s graphics.”

Referring to Brutalist websites as merely simple or ugly—and the Brutalist web design thinkpiece’s hallmark is the use of “ugly” in the headline before abandoning that canard in the article’s body—is a missed opportunity to understand both the architectural movement and where the Internet is going.

In purely linguistic terms, Brutalism is derived from “béton brut” (raw concrete), the material favored by Le Corbusier. In aesthetic terms, Brutalist buildings tend to be large, explicit in visions of how people ought to move through spaces, and open about their primary materials. In practice, most Brutalist buildings are short on ornamentation, but the concrete diagrids adorning the Welbeck Street car park and scalloped edges of Keith Ingham and Charles Wilson’s “Preston Bus Station” attest to the dangers of treating Brutalism as a mere synonym of minimalism.

not every concrete building ought to be deemed Brutalist, neither should every website with sharp edges

This surface-level invocation of Brutalism, moreover, overlooks its meaningful ideas about space. Undertakings like Le Corbusier’s “Unité d’Habitation” in Marseille or Ërno Goldfinger’s “Trellick Tower” in London envisioned alternate modes of connection between buildings, with elevated streetways replacing the traditional ground-level grid. Such projects present the viewer with two interpretive traps. The first involves confusing alternate visions of urbanism with outright hostility to urban space. Romano, for instance, writes that Brutalist buildings “don’t make any effort to blend into the urban landscape or environment surrounding them.” This is true in a narrow sense but fails to credit these buildings with attempting to supplant these models. (For the most part they failed in that regard, but many architectural styles make little effort to blend in at their inceptions.)

The second trap is to mistake the buildings’ austere qualities with austerity itself. “As the austerity of the 1950s gave way to the energy and renewed national self-confidence of the 1960s,” writes the architecture historian and curator Owen Hopkins, “Brutalism took centre stage, defining British architecture of that decade.” History is unforgiving, and the image of Brutalism is in large part shaped by how these buildings aged—as hostile territories and as symbols of austerity. Such memories are neither unfair nor unfounded, but this ex post facto telling of history tends to erase Brutalism’s original context and ideas.

Just as not every concrete building ought to be deemed Brutalist, neither should every website with sharp edges. The Drudge Report, one of Romano’s examples, may be light on formatting but it does not offer an alternate vision for community building to its era of the Internet in the way “Unité d’Habitation” did. It is simply a dated website that, if it must be architecturally analogized, is a dilapidated-yet-watertight. Suckless.org, another of Romano’s examples, is simply a website without flashing features. That may pass as radical on a site that registers 36 potential trackers with Privacy Badger, but to call Suckless a Brutalist site is to otherwise hold both it and Brutalism to a punishing low standard. This approach only makes sense if one concedes that Brutalism, all forms of modernism, and various forms minimalism are fundamentally interchangeable terms.

Such categorical confusion precludes more interesting discussions about the nature of the Internet. At a time when major players like Facebook and Google threaten to impose their organizing logic on much of the Internet, there is a dire need for alternate community models and linkages in the spirit of Le Corbusier’s “Unité d’Habitation.” This, to an extent, is what a site like tilde.club attempts to do, but its Brutalist credentials have more to do with its overarching vision of society than its superficial minimalism. Put otherwise: If you polished tilde.club, it would still be more radical than most sites but it would never be credited as such.

a gussied up version of intra-generational reactionist tendencies

The uptick in web Brutalism coincides with a resurgence of interest in the architectural style. (Tragically, that uptick in interest has come too late to save many Brutalist icons from demolition.) “In its ruggedness and lack of concern to look comfortable or easy,” reads the inscription atop brutalistwebsites.com, a popular curator of the genre’s latest entries, “Brutalism can be seen as a reaction by a younger generation to the lightness, optimism, and frivolity of today’s webdesign.” Replace web design with architecture and you have the animating spirit of popular sites like F*ckyeahbrutalism. As an architectural style, mid-century Brutalism was also a reaction to the overelaborate gaiety of previous generations. There is a spiritual connection between all these strains of thinking, but only some advocate for Brutalism as a solution; web Brutalism is merely—and ironically—a gussied up version of intra-generational reactionist tendencies.

In his defense of Brutalism, the writer Jonathan Meades notes: “Brutalism’s opponents dare not simply own up to disliking the look of the stuff.” This is the rare case where critical discourse stands to benefit from a wider use of the word “ugly.” Sometimes that is all critics are trying to say. Criticizing a Brutalist building for its aesthetic failings is not the same thing as criticizing its underlying vision. In the case of the Brutalist website trend, aesthetics—specifically, a studied ugliness—are the unifying factor.

How else could Pinboard, which represents a philosophical vision of an Internet where pages have smaller filesizes than Russian novels, and Bloomberg Businessweek’s website end up in the same category, as they do in Arcement’s story? A useful critical discourse for the Internet should be able to differentiate between the latter’s delightfully cacophonous array of hard edges and the former’s monastic restraint. The Brutalist web design trend could be an opportunity to deepen understandings of both the Internet and architectural history, but at present neither of those things is happening.

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New VR game lets you walk around inside a Van Gogh painting

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THE NIGHT CAFE (PC)

BY BORROWED LIGHT STUDIOS

The point of going to a museum is to gain a more tactile understanding of a piece of art. Being in front of a picture allows you to see the minute details of creation—the brush strokes and oil drips. Yet, museums keep you at a literal arms length from the art. But a VR Van Gogh experience titled The Night Café hopes to correct this discontinuity. Inviting viewers to step inside the swirling vibrancy of Van Gogh’s Le Café de nuit, it allows you to explore the painting as a 3D environment. Last year, Kill Screen writer David Rudin described how “each frame of The Night Café is a painting in its own right.” Leaning in to the tension between traditional art and interactive art, The Night Café turns viewers into more active participants of the piece, allowing them to frame and experience the work as they see fit.

Perfect for: VR junkies, artists, museum lovers

Playtime: 10 minutes or forever

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Watch_Dogs 2, this time with actual dogs

If there was anything missing from the underwhelming Watch_Dogs (2014), it was actual dogs. Luckily, bright and early Wednesday morning, Ubisoft hosted an unbearably long livestream cataloguing the details of its hardly-anticipated sequel, Watch_Dogs 2 (most of which was appropriately leaked—via premature ads—ahead of schedule). And guess what? It finally played up the single feature that we’ve all wanted from the beginning: legit dogs. Pettable dogs, even.

By my eagle-eyed count (and watching the 18-minute broadcast on mute due to not really caring too much), 10 dogs total pounce onto the screen at some point, all within the mix of cinematic trailers and good ol’ direct game footage. In most cases, it’s just three different action shots of presumably the same dog, reacting to drones or whatever techie junk this game has. But a dog is a dog. And all dogs should exist for Marcus—Watch_Dogs 2’s new, surprisingly non-white main character—to pet.

The first dog, possibly a chocolate Watch_Labrador, appears to be walking completely lackadaisically (leash free!) in the most touristy district of San Francisco. This particular pup is carefree and completely unaware of the nearby looming threat of the terrifying Bush Man. I hope the dog is careful. There’s also a gross-looking dude with a goatee and a touristy Golden Gate Bridge-emblazoned tank top. I hope the dog bites him.

Our second mutt is even cuter, but looks to be yet another Labrador (maybe with a slight mix of a Rottweiler). This fella barks at the camera, obviously a showmanship of Ubisoft’s new and improved dog drool physics. In another shot, our new Watch_Labrador_Maybe_Rottweiler pal runs like it’s got somewhere desperately to be. Maybe it sees Marcus in the distance, ready to reach down for a pet.

I can’t think of a better city for Watch_Dogs 2 to finally embrace its avid dog-appreciation

Next up is a German Shepherd (finally, some breed diversity) hanging out with some seedy police officers. This Watch_German_Shepherd exerts loyalty, strength, and most important of all, curiosity. Its ears perk up as Marcus scoots his drone closer. This tough canine isn’t afraid to show fear when there’s a nearby explosion, probably worried about its owners’ safety. After seeing this heroic dog’s plights, I hope it eventually sees the light and abandons its police officer owners, joining Marcus and his league of other casual canine acquaintances.

The final dog in the Watch_Dogs 2 announcement presentation, not counting the incessantly barking and bay-stenching sea lions (or “sea dogs”) at the top and bottom of the video presentation, is a yellow Labrador. This yellow Lab gets startled as Marcus rolls up on it with a drone (poor baby), and even shows up once more at the familiar Pier 39. This little dog gets the least amount of screentime out of all the others. But its yellow coat still shines golden, like its soul.

San Francisco is often touted as a city that’s dog population outnumbers its children population. So, truthfully, I can’t think of a better city for Watch_Dogs 2 to finally embrace its avid dog-appreciation. Even if 90 percent of the dogs are unrealistically Watch_Labradors and never on a leash. Peace.

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The Pac-Man

David Race is the best Pac-Man (1980) player in the world but would never admit that. Sure, you could watch his hand move the joystick like a professional driver downshifting around a corner. Or stand there dumbstruck as he tells you where the enemies will move seconds before they do so. “Keep your eyes on Blinky,” he’ll say. And just before you have time to ask which one that is, Pac-Man does something you never thought possible: he passes through the red ghost unscathed. Watch for a little while longer and you’ll soon realize David is not reacting to the game, the game is reacting to him. If you mention how incredible it all is, he’ll laugh and say, “yeah but it’s just Pac-Man, you know?”

Here are the facts: to achieve a perfect Pac-Man score of 3,330,360 you need to navigate 256 boards, or levels, and eat every pellet, fruit, and ghost—all without dying. If that sounds nearly impossible, it’s because it is. Only eight people in the world have achieved a verified perfect score on a Pac-Man arcade machine. The first was Billy Mitchell in 1999 with a time of five hours and 30 minutes. Since then, a dedicated few have developed intricate patterns in order to see just how fast a perfect game could be achieved. On May 22, 2013 Race broke the world record with a time of 3:28.49. The previous time of 3:33.1 was also his. The time before that… well, you get the point.

Twin Galaxies (the authority when it comes to world record videogame scores) lists Race’s May 22nd run as the current world record—over six minutes faster than the next time. Type his name into YouTube and you can find a complete recording of his achievement. At first, it can be nerve-racking watching him play—the ghosts mere pixels away from forcing a restart. Keep watching, however, and your nervousness will dissipate. Race moves with an almost preordained precision. What’s unexpected is his reaction to breaking the record. Instead of jubilation we get indifference. “Yippee, hurray, and all that kind of stuff,” he says with mock excitement.

an almost preordained precision

This reaction got me thinking: what is it like to be the best in the world at something? What is it like to be so good, that your only real competition is yourself? What happens when playing Pac-Man transforms from hobby into self expression?

///

We first met at The Place Retro Arcade in Deer Park, Cincinnati. “How was your drive?” he asked as I stepped out of my car. At five feet 11 inches, pale blue eyes, jean shorts, and a pair of beat-up Nike Air Monarch’s on his feet, 46-year-old Race looks like the platonic form of a friendly Midwestern neighbor. “Thanks for driving all this way,” he said, and then proceeded to hold the door. We entered the arcade, and leaped back in time.

With over 60 different games from the 1980s, Michael Jackson playing over the speakers, and pinball machines galore, The Place is equal parts arcade and time capsule. Race’s pace quickens as we approach Pac-Man, and he greets the machine like an old friend. “The first time I saw one of these was in the 7th grade at a Lawson’s convenience store. It’s just one of those things, if there was a different machine then maybe I would be playing something else, but that’s something you can’t plan for.” His eyes squint and his smile widens. “I see the colors and the ghosts and I need more quarters because I keep dying. I’ve never been able to totally recreate that feeling, but it’s fun to try.”

The rules of Pac-Man are simple. Pac-Man’s goal is to eat all 244 pellets arranged in a maze while avoiding four ghosts whose goal is to eat Pac-Man. Every so often, fruit will appear that award bonus points when consumed. Located in each of the four corners of the board is an energizer. When Pac-Man eats one of these, the ghosts turn blue and the roles are reversed: for a short time, Pac-Man can now eat the ghosts for even more points.

“Pac-Man wasn’t like the other games,” Race continued. It has these individual characters and you didn’t have to play long to learn that each ghost moved a little differently. They have eyes for crying out loud! [The game] has a simple joystick but at the same time when you first play it will kick your butt. That’s why you need to develop different strategies, different patterns.”

Patterns in competitive Pac-Man are trade secrets and for good reason—because each ghost is programmed to react based on Pac-Man’s every move, by developing a series of precise movements, expert players are able to control where the enemy is at all times. Some patterns are so precise that a half-second delay here or there will cause the synchronized dance to fall apart. If Clyde, Blinky, Pinky, and Inky are planets, then Pac-Man is the sun.

Race’s playing style is completely relaxed. Slouched to one side, legs crossed, his posture is reminiscent of someone waiting for their bus to arrive. However, his gaze is serious and grip purposeful. Using his thumb and index finger to move the joystick, his movements are so precise that if such a thing existed, he could conceivably earn a living hustling people over games of Operation (1965). Each level is designed to become increasingly more difficult, but to Race they’re all the same. He toys with the ghosts, faking one way and then going another. Each turn is taken milliseconds early like a tennis player hitting a ball on the rise. This causes Pac-Man to literally drift around corners like a souped-up tuner car. “This is called the ‘Fat-Man’ pattern,” he says as he stacks the ghosts like pancakes and eats them in a single gulp.

The pleasure in watching Race play Pac-Man comes from the realization that he has achieved an absurd level of mastery. Thought bleeds into action, and reminds you of a seasoned jazz musician to whom the instrument has become an extension of the self. This transcendent quality is difficult to articulate, but the piano player Bill Evans’ writings on art and improvisation found in the liner notes of Miles Davis’ 1959 album Kind of Blue come close:

There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.

Comparing the way Race plays Pac-Man to the grace of a master Japanese calligrapher might seem farfetched, but is surprisingly accurate. Much like the continuous movement of a brush on delicate parchment, Race’s actions must be purposeful and immediate. In order to complete one of his intricate patterns, his character must navigate the screen’s 1,008 squares with pixel-perfect precision. The moment he thinks about what he is doing, he will die. There is no time for delay or second guessing. Instead, first thought becomes best thought. Pac-Man becomes a form of Zen—the sound of one joystick clapping.

deliberation cannot interfere

The term “best” is, of course, subjective. Some will argue that Billy Mitchell is the best Pac-Man player because he was the first reach that elusive 3,333,360. Others might give the title to Chris Ayra who held the fastest perfect time from 2000 until 2009. There might even be votes for Canadian player Rick Fothergill who was not only the second person to achieve a perfect game (only 28 days after Mitchell), but on October 14th 2009 beat Race’s world record time by over five minutes. “I honestly think Rick Fothergill hasn’t been given the credit he deserves,” Race told me over the phone. “He’s the person who has given me the most competition. We both know how hard it is and honestly I don’t want to try for the record again unless someone comes along and beats my time. Competition is fun, but not when you’re competing against yourself.”

///

Race grew up in a small suburb in Dayton, Ohio called Old North. His mother Catherine worked at a children’s medical center, and his father David worked at a few gas stations in the area. David loved pinball and would often take Race and his two sisters to a nearby Malibu Grand Prix arcade. The six-year stretch between the years 1979 to 1984 are considered by many as the “Golden Age” of arcade games. For a time, companies like Atari, Nintendo, and Namco simply could not miss. For a time, legends were born: Space Invaders (1978), Asteroids (1979), Donkey Kong (1981), Dig Dug (1982), Tron (1982)—games so loved that they have become canon. Still, among the gods there must be a Zeus, and for many, that was Pac-Man.

It’s difficult to overstate just how different Pac-Man was compared to the other games of its time. Instead of making another spaceship-type shooting game, Pac-Man’s creator Toru Iwatani wanted a game that did not focus on killing, but instead on eating. Legend goes that, one night, Iwatani went out for pizza with some of his friends, and as he grabbed the first slice, inspiration struck. The missing slice formed a mouth and thus Pac-Man (known originally as Puck-Man) was born. Pac-Man would go on to become the first videogame mascot, the first game that had mass appeal towards both boys and girls, and would eventually go on to become the best selling arcade game of all time.

Tim Balderramos (the 4th person in the world to achieve a perfect Pac-Man score) met Race at a tournament in 2010 that coincided with the game’s 30th anniversary. He remembers the “Golden Age” as an era when the top arcade players were treated like celebrities. “In some cases players who were considered the best of the best would come in with a group of fans.” As Balderramous explains, during the early 80s, arcade games weren’t just something you did while waiting for your movie to start—high scores were taken seriously. “You had people jostling and playing mind games with you and looking over your shoulder. I had kids that would come and as I started getting better trying to study what I was doing—and there was a bit of Paranoia there. What I did was actually bury my strategy and switch techniques.”

Race, on the other hand, never reached that level of competitiveness in the 80s. While he loved Pac-Man and recycled aluminum cans to play when he could, he never dedicated the amount of time players like Mitchell and Balderramous did. He had no desire for world record scores, nor for the fame that came with them. Instead, he was just a kid like countless others who grew up playing arcade games. A kid who eventually joined the Marine Corps as a field operator. A kid who married and had two kids of his own. A kid who had a divorce. A kid who began playing Pac-Man to cheer himself up. A kid who found purpose in Christianity. A kid who got really good at Pac-Man. A kid who moved back to Dayton and works at the post office. A kid who became even better at Pac-Man. A kid who met a woman named Lorie who would later became his fiancée. A kid who loves to karaoke on the weekends and sings a mean Bon Jovi. A kid who became the best.

After watching Race play for a few hours, we drove to a nearby Frisch’s Big Boy for dinner. Dr. Pepper in hand, I asked Race if he thought someone like me could break his record if I wanted it bad enough. He smiled, clearly unafraid of someone who has never passed the third board. “If you really want to do something, whatever you do, don’t give up on it. Things are gonna beat you down a lot more than you’ll ever find in a videogame. Some things might get you down, but you just got to push through, you know?”

“I think he plays Pac-Man because it makes him feel young again.”

We returned to the arcade and I met Race’s fiancée Lorie Brunsky. “Whenever we go out somewhere, I like to tell people about David’s record because he won’t do it on his own—he’s just not that kind of person” Brunsky said. “Did you know he has his own trading card?” We talked some more: About how Race insisted he would pay for my dinner and his love of Dr. Pepper. About his sense of humor and how much he genuinely likes helping people. How next month he plans to hold a Pac-Man charity event to fight cancer. Then she stopped—her voice measured and direct.

“I want people to know he’s not one of these mom’s basement types. I think he plays Pac-Man because it makes him feel young again.”

And with that she thanked me for my time, and the two of us walked over to Race, who by now had a few people gathered around him. He tells me the best thing about having the world record is that he doesn’t need to worry about it anymore—doesn’t need to worry about scores or times. He has nothing left to prove.

“Everyone has their game,” he says aloud, eyes focused on the screen. “They just need to find it.” After a while, those playing at the surrounding arcade machines stop what they’re doing and join Race’s collective orbit. He does not notice. He is somewhere else, and he’s having fun.

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Islid lets you enter that curious half-asleep state while fully awake

Unnatural shapes, swirling colors, inexplicable lights, droning music, and a world that is constantly changing in texture and size: welcome to the hypnagogic state.

You’ve been here before, probably. And, if I can let you in on a secret, I’m just about there right now. It may sound ridiculous, but everyone you have ever known has been there: even your grandmother, and hell, even your dog. That’s because, while it sounds like something your one uncle who’s really into the Grateful Dead might try to induce on the weekend for kicks, a hypnagogic state is actually just the feeling that takes over right before falling asleep. It’s also the feeling Aaron Oldenburg is trying to evoke in his latest game, Islid.

To a degree, Oldenburg has worked with these sensations before. They are key to the unsettling, Blair Witch-esque atmosphere found in his game 1000 Heads Among the Trees. But in Islid, they are at their most raw. There are no human shapes to be found, no recognizable landmarks to guide you, no voices to follow, and no narrative to discover. It is a pure, abstract experience, and if I had to compare it to any traditional horror scenario, I have to wonder if it’s similar to the feelings supposedly experienced during an alien abduction.

a pure, abstract experience

Which is fitting enough, really. Sleep is about the closest thing we have to entering another world, one that operates by an unfamiliar set of rules, and has even served as the basis for a number of scary stories itself. Take Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street (1985), or even the more modern internet urban legend of the Russian Sleep Experiment. It’s no wonder that making sleep out to be dangerous is such an effective scare tactic, of course. We all need to sleep at some point, and it is when we are at our most vulnerable. Throw in some stores of real-life sleep paralysis, and it’s not hard to have a niggling question in the back of your head as to what really happens when your head hits the pillow.

There’s no inherent reason Islid needs to be read as horror, of course. But in playing it alongside the Morton Feldman Quartet that Oldenburg recommends, and finding myself beset by the game’s many pursuing black blobs, I can’t help but feel more like I’m about to enter a nightmare than a pleasant night’s dreams. For someone more comfortable in this setting, however, the game could prove a meditative experience. It could be a way to become more familiar with something we’ve all experienced at one point or another, and to leave with a greater understanding, and maybe even appreciation for, that altered state of being.

But as for me, this is one I’d recommend playing with the lights on.

You can download Islid for free over on itch.io.

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Photo series shows how GTA V’s bleakness mirrors everyday life

As technology advances and our lives grow more and more digital, the barrier between our physical world and the virtual one grows increasingly blurred. As videogame graphics venture further into the dark lands of the uncanny valley, it seems only consequential that a photographer would eventually utilize in-game screenshots to juxtapose them against our physical world.

Pairing our world with one of the most illustrious and life-like of open world games

That’s what photographer Ollie Ma’ of Buckinghamshire, England has done, having captured the thematic emotions of disconnect in his photography. In his latest project, “Open World,” Ma’ couples in-game screenshots of the lush landscapes and characters within Grand Theft Auto V (2013), alongside real-life, similarly framed photos. In a description for the photobook compilation of the project, Ma’ writes, “In contemporary society, the digital world pervades the physical to such an extent that any distinction between the two is obsolete. The simulated environments of open world video games illustrate the interchangeability between the virtual and the everyday.”

Ma’s past projects include “Home,” a photographic series illustrating youth dissatisfaction within the town of Great Kingshill in Buckinghamshire. The series explores the tribulations of small town claustrophobia and its sense of disconnect from the outside world within young people. Ma’s watchful eye carries over into “Open World.” This time focusing on the sense of longing that unveils from the game’s virtual avatars, and their disconnect between the digital and physical world. Actively bending what we as viewers perceive as “real.”

Ma’s unsettling project regarding the dissolution of the digital and physical divide amplifies this seedy reality. Especially in pairing our world with one of the most illustrious and life-like of open world games. It’s another example of our everyday lives going virtual—whether we like it or not.

Order one of only 10 copies of Ollie Ma’s photobook for “Open World” here .

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Where does brutalism go after concrete?

The primary material of brutalism, the oft derided and now vaguely in vogue architectural movement, was concrete. Every architectural movement has its primary materials, be they glass, wood, or steel, but in the case of brutalism concrete dominates all discussion of the style’s underlying ideas. It is both the literal and figurative building block, such that it is hard to imagine brutalism as being in any way extricable from concrete.

Designer Dantilon Brown’s “The Brutal Deluxe,” the latest in his series of generative architectural images, reimagines brutalism with a different building block: pre-existing buildings. “I set about programming algorithms to generate an imaginary city,” he told Wired’s Jenna Garrett. “One that I could populate with buildings and structures without having to draw or 3-D model.” Using photos of buildings from the 1970s, Brown’s algorithm creates fractal cities that fold in on one another and, as with the upcoming Manifold Garden, appear to extend past the horizon.

The net result of Brown’s work is a sort of exponential brutalism: cubic structures built out of other cubic structures. These buildings are at once heavy—how else to describe a series of relics stacked atop one another?—and yet light insofar as they are stacked upon one another. It helps that photography is not bound by the laws of physics.

concrete structures are not frozen in time; they are recyclable

Brown’s artwork is not as centered on physical improbability as the work of Belgian photographer Filip Dujardin, whose works often cantilever towers in any and all gravity-defying directions, but it also about unorthodox uses of brutalist structures.

“Fictions” by Filip Dujardin

Insofar as you could not live in its buildings, “The Brutal Deluxe” does not provide a working answer to the question of what to do with brutalist structures. Brown’s latest work does, however, encourage the viewer to think about possible alternate uses for brutalist structures. This runs contrary to the current trend in demolishing classic works of the genre:

The partial remains of John Maddin's Birmingham Library: pic.twitter.com/HUlAlb0FSY

— Charles Holland (@ordinarycharles) June 6, 2016

In Brown’s algorithm, concrete structures are not frozen in time; they are recyclable. This is not a wholly original argument. “Sometimes a book is hard to read or a film is hard to watch but by completing it you know it was something important and worthwhile which deserved your perseverance,” writes the photographer Andy Spain. “These buildings also deserve your perseverance.” Brown’s images compel to persevere and imagine a future in which these structures are not just interesting architectural relics remembered on niche Tumblrs, but malleable parts of the urban landscape.

See Brown’s “The Brutal Deluxe” image series here.

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It’s time to tell the forest to f*ck off

It’s a quiet day next to a peaceful river, the sun has set. A steady rain falls. It’s time to tell the forest to fuck off.

TELL THE FOREST TO FUCK OFF is a small downloadable game for Windows and Mac, created by Tak. Short and to the point, TELL THE FOREST TO FUCK OFF is exactly what you’d imagine based on the title. You, a small bipedal stick figure with a irregularly shaped head, shake with the kind of penciled-in rage of a mid-level bureaucrat, and then let it all out in an enraged yell, knocking down a nearby log. The forest has felt the might of your wrath.

less treehugger and more tree-puncher

The micro-game manages to capture an interesting feeling in being surrounded by nature, but also being incredibly frustrated. Naturalists have long created a relationship with the outdoors, and games have tapped into the more peaceful aspect of that, from watching a summer rain in Minecraft (2009) to exploring the cute loveliness of Botanicula (2012). But where is the frustration that American naturalist Henry David Thoreau mentions in the anger and prose of his writings—“the savage in man is never quite eradicated,” he once wrote—among these depictions of nature? That’s where TELL THE FOREST TO FUCK OFF steps in.

It’s a situation that’s less treehugger and more tree-puncher, but nevertheless still appreciative of the environment it encapsulates. “I think I just like the juxtaposition of a pleasant setting and being too mad to appreciate it,” Tak says. In order to “yell,” you have to hold down a button as the screen slowly fills with more and more white lines. Once released, they wreak havoc on the surrounding region.  

The game was made over the course of about a week around New Years, and features random character and forest generation, which Tak said made it feel like “everyone gets their own little place.” The title, in all its profane glory, came first. The experience formed organically after the fact.

TELL THE FOREST TO FUCK OFF is free and available to download for Windows and Mac on itch.io.

The post It’s time to tell the forest to f*ck off appeared first on Kill Screen.

Marc ten Bosch and the mathematical mysteries of his 4D videogame

This article is part of Issue 8.5, a digital zine available to Kill Screen’s print subscribers. Read more about it here and get a copy yourself by subscribing to our soon-to-be-relaunched print magazine.

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The mantis shrimp is said to have the most complex eyes in all of the animal kingdom (including humans). These ancient crustaceans can move their segmented eyes independently and each is capable of depth perception all on its own. Additionally, the mantis shrimp’s eyes contain more than five times the number of color receptors as the human eye, meaning they can see colors that are imperceptible to you and me, including several bands of ultraviolet light. We know these types of colors exist because we have special instruments that allow us to bear witness to them, if only through data readouts or other visual abstractions. But to the mantis shrimp, ultraviolet light is nothing special; it’s just an expected facet of the visual world like any other hue.

Marc ten Bosch doesn’t have mantis shrimp eyes or any kind of superhuman abilities, but in his game Miegakure he does one better—he gives players the power to traverse the fourth dimension. The same way that a cubist Picasso painting grants viewers a way of experiencing a three-dimensional portrait on a flat plane, ten Bosch manages to carve four-dimensional slices into three-dimensional spaces (represented via two-dimensional computer monitor). At first glance, Miegakure doesn’t appear more complicated than any other isometric puzzle game. You move a character around a small square of land floating on a plane above a dynamic background wallpaper. You can jump and push things to traverse the zen garden-like space, but ultimately you’ll run into a dead end where the only option will be swapping one dimension for another. At once your static square morphs into an elongated rectangle, and what was a stone wall has been replaced by a flat, sandy surface. It’s a head-spinning feat, made possible through a merging of artistic ideas and mathematical practice—an intersection that’s at the heart of all videogames, but approached here by ten Bosch with a pioneering spirit that sets it apart.

You might be surprised to know that IRL Marc ten Bosch is relegated to a regular three-dimensional Earth-bound existence just like everyone else. In fact, though there’s such complex systems at work in ten Bosch’s game, the way he speaks about it is somewhat nonchalant. “I had to invent some new types of math for this,” he tossed out as part of a longer response. Yeah, he just invented some new math. No big deal, right? Though ten Bosch has enlisted outside work for modeling, animation, and music, developing Miegakure is largely a solo affair. He builds his four-dimensional worlds on a simple laptop after sketching them out with basic pencil and paper.

I asked ten Bosch if his 4D virtual world ever starts blurring with the real one, to which he chuckled, “Not really.” He went on. “This process of taking the world we know and trying to make it independent of dimension is actually very enlightening, but not in a ‘what if this room was 4D’ sense. More like, ‘Oh, I understand what turning an object means regardless of how many dimensions it has.’” It’s an elaborate way of understanding a simple action very deeply, an ethos that seems ingrained into Miegakure’s design and ten Bosch’s creative process.

Ten Bosch has been working on Miegakure for over seven years now, and it’s an enveloping project for a one-person team, but he’s careful to prevent the game from becoming too much of a self-portrait. “I’m the one who’s presenting [the game] to you, so clearly I’m a part of the process, but I’m trying to disconnect myself from the concept because it’s beautiful [on its own], and I don’t need to be in there.” In fact, he’d rather not dictate the meaning behind the game at all, answering questions with more questions like, “What if the universe had all these things that you didn’t know?” and “What if it’s only presenting you with a specific part of it, and at some point you could suddenly see what was always hidden to you?”

the art of building a space to the point that it’s almost therapeutic

“Miegakure” translates to “hide and reveal,” and is used in reference to Japanese gardens. It embodies the concept that to truly understand and appreciate the garden, one must experience it firsthand, witnessing all manner of purposefully designed and naturally occurring phenomena. As part of the development of Miegakure, ten Bosch made a trip to Japan, where he visited some of the country’s renowned imperial gardens. “When you see a Japanese garden, it makes you feel amazing just to be next to it, and I didn’t expect that from just pictures,” he said. “It’s the art of building a space to the point that it’s almost therapeutic.” The zen garden and temple aesthetics of Miegakure hit this point of reference explicitly, but ten Bosch is quick to note that he’s not intent on making some direct comment on Japanese gardens or their surrounding culture. “The influences from Japan on this game are, for me, mostly intuitive,” he said. “It’s all connected but not in a way that you can pick apart.” Not that saying as much will stop players from trying.

There’s also a certain degree of “hide and reveal” in game programming, where the underlying frameworks are rarely seen by players, but intricate and emotive characters and worlds are borne out of layers of code. Perhaps one of the most stunning elements of Miegakure is that its fourth-dimensionality has not been faked. Remember when I described a wall disappearing into sand earlier? Well, ten Bosch’s fourth dimension is not just some parallel universe that the game transports you to when you step through a portal. No, four dimensions are built into the architecture of the game world at the code level. There’s no fudging the details to make it look like something spectacular is happening when one spatial dimension is swapped with another. Something spectacular is in fact happening. The wall and the sand exist at the same time. The difference is in what you can see. “Having applications is what brings anything forward,” ten Bosch told me. And this is where that whole “new math” bit comes in. “There’s a lot of math that exists to cover [these concepts], but once you actually try and apply it to something, then you bring up these problems and questions that wouldn’t necessarily come up when you’re just manipulating symbols for no reason. Which is the same in any kind of science.”

And that’s the tricky thing with working on an artistic concept that is so contingent on its science: how do you maintain its personal expressiveness? “The process is mathematical, but the output is beautiful images,” said ten Bosch. Neither art nor science exists without the other, and ten Bosch uses the inherent mystery of 4D objects to seed artistic intrigue. “[An ordinary object] suddenly becomes beautiful because you can’t see all of it.“ For all the actualization of 4D space, ten Bosch’s greatest success might be in stirring players’ imaginations. The difference between what is real and what we can or cannot see just got a whole lot more complicated. Luckily, you don’t have to be a mantis shrimp to see it.

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