Fluid is an unusual game project commissioned from gameLab by the Rüschlikon Center for Global Dialogue, in Zurich, Switzerland.

Inside FLUID lives an abstract, miniature ecosystem made up of a handful of different "species" of organisms, each species relating to the user and to each other in unique ways.
When an interaction begins, the screen displays an offset grid of dots. These dots are the ALGAE, the substratum of the ecosystem. If the player touches the screen, the algae will bend smoothly away from the point of contact, springing back into place when the player's finger is removed.

Floating about the screen are seven pulsating circles, the FEEDERS. When three of them are pushed together so that they touch, a triangular feeder is formed. When the feeder touches a piece of algae, it changes color, and becomes edible.

The most active elements of the ecosystem are CREATURES. These hungry organisms will move towards edible algae, making their way across the screen as they do so. The final component of the FLUID ecosystem, MUCK, is formed whenever a player touches a creature, and it appears as a large gray spot in the environment. Once muck appears, it will slowly spread and eventually take over the screen.
If you can undo the disturbance your initial interaction caused, you win.

gameLab is a game development company based in New York focused on experimental game design. Their games break ground by finding new audiences for gaming, inventing original forms of gameplay, and by exploring narrative content and visual and audio styles that aren't normally found in games.

Team cHman (F)
Opniyama

Climb the surrealist slopes of Opniyama! Participate in this interactive game, adding decorative elements at whim, and leave your mark on the game for the players that follow.
Discover the thousands of twists and turns on your way up this vertical world, and leave clues for the next players. Each player directs a character with a climbing axe that allows him to hoist himself up to the overhanging plateaux. Players must scale the plateaux by swinging themselves up to the top of the wall.
Players may also personalize their game universe by adding elements on the game plateaux such as monster-plants that push. The elements added to the decor also become an integral part of the game play. Each player follows on the session of the preceding players and benefits from the modifications made by them.
An infinite game where the decor loops and evolves.

Opniyama is a project produced by Le Palais de Tokyo, contemporary creation place, part of the Tokyo Games programme proposed by Laurence Dreyfus.

Team cHmAn is an entertainment and animation production company created in 1998 focused on multimedia creation. Recognised for its excellence in creating original graphic universes and its mastery of dedicated technological Web tools, it is mainly known for "Banja", an online multiplayer game that has received important awards (Ars Electronica's 2001 Net Vision) and garnered a whole community of fans that continues to grow.

Hi-ReS! (GB)
London Pixel Orchestra presents: another 8 bit the dust

"Another 8 bit the dust" allows the participant to recreate the graphics and sounds from the 8-bit era by modifying physical space.

The system consist of a camera that captures whatever is in front of it, which is processed to conform to the limitations of 8-bit era graphics. This image is fed into the system, where a play-head will trigger sound, according to the parameters contained in the current slice of the image. This will allow the participant to affect music and visuals by their mere presence or to leave a more permanent mark by modifying the physical space.

The piece uses a web-cam as input device connected to a PC. The machine acquires a source image that is reduced in size and colours, using a palette appropriate of 8-bit era. This is then rendered on to the screen using OpenGL.

Onscreen a play-head moves from left to right. When it intersects with a colour that is not the background colour it triggers a sound, allowing the participant to create a musical score with his/her own body or by applying colour to the physical space seen by the camera.

Hi-ReS! is a digital media company based in London founded by Florian Schmitt and Alexandra Jugovic. Hi-ReS! was not planned, it happened. Jugovic and Schmitt took its inspiration out of a genuine fascination with interactive media and the possibilities it offered with technologies like Flash or Shockwave. Coming from backgrounds in film, music and traditional art, the Internet gave them the platform they had dreamed of.

NEXT