Author: George Simms

This is a speculative project exploring the use of Pix2Pix in a render pipeline, using it as a tool to explore thinking about the render process in a conceptual framework. Pix2Pix is an image translation ML algorithm that was groundbreaking when it was released in 2016. Created by Phillip Isola, Jun-Yan Zhu, Tinghui Zhou and … Continue reading Mesh2Matter

From my play testing feedback I realized that the interface and controls needed some grounding, a way to introduce the player into the world smoothly. To help resolve this issue I developed an introduction which helps the players understand and use the controls more fluidly, giving them the proper introduction to the mechanics of the world. To begin with I moved towards a fully leap controlled … Continue reading Development

Mary Flanagan’s Critical Play explores how play and games are a powerful tool for building social values and norms, and how they can be augmented and redirected to display and actuate new social change.   If you look at games in through her perception and break them down, they give clues to how a society structures itself and the roles that existed for the society’s people to follow. An example she gives of play or games … Continue reading Critical Play

For my Playable soundscape I have recently finished a basic version of the game’s environment, with a few of the main interactions such as the movement controller and procedurally produced planets. The planets being sound sources modulated by moon controls, produced procedurally so you get a huge variety of sounds and experiences. The Planets placed within a 3D virtual void, with there positions simulating a realistic 3D sound environment. You explore by fly around, using a hand tracking device called a Leap Motion. The interface allows for the player to … Continue reading Play Testing

Panoramicle produced by Fernando Ramallo and David Kanaga is a beautiful interactive AV playable experience. It takes you through 15 varying levels where you are moved through scenes and sounds, each level infinitely going on with no real ending. Each element of the sound and scene can be modulated by an array of nine 2D controls, which can be mapped to a midi/osc interface or played by the … Continue reading Panoramicle

I have also been thinking through other interactions/visualizations to test out new forms of understanding music, soundscapes and making.  For the time being I have developed some sound reactive particle systems, that add a cosmic experience and another form of seeing, feeling and understanding the sound around you.   The first being a sound reactive cosmic … Continue reading Other interactions /visuals

In Roger Caillois duality of Ludus (structure) and Paidia (playfulness), which I think is still relevant today (even though I’m not very fond of binaries), you see two polar ends of the playfield. Ludus being the forms of play which define rigorous structures and make you twist and turn to fulfill predetermined and normally competitive goals/outcomes. Paidia … Continue reading Cas Holman + Paidia

Roger Caillois 1961 book “Man, Play and Games” creates a extensive depiction of games and play. His approach sees play created outside of the real space time, a void that we form and fill through our imagination and interaction. He starts by extending Johan Huizinga’s definition, questioning the need for competitivity and finding great difficulty in defining a body for … Continue reading M an, Play and Games

At the moment I have just configured one instrument for my played experience, I thought it would be best to develop one well in this time span and move onto others in the future. The instrument I have been working on has taken on the form of a planet with orbiting controls, which modulate looping samples. The primary interaction is … Continue reading Instrument development

Brian Willems 2017 book, Speculative Realism and Science Fiction, is an exploration into both areas through one another. It looks at how Science fiction has been a speculative tool and presents a collection of science fiction references that start to move into the realm of speculative realism, or can be taken there. Using objects, narrative and descriptive tools as metaphors/examples of ideas and mechanics within speculative realism, it … Continue reading Speculative Realism and Science Fiction