This is a video of a complete walkthrough for a little game called “feed the head“. In the game all you do is experimenting with the psychedelic logic of the possible interactions. And it is fun to do so!
If you think about playing the game, do it before you watch this video. It’s free and very calm and played right in the browser window.
now, do as the dormouse said..
“Bullet hell” is a subgenre of “shoot’em up” which is a subgenre of shooter games. Video games don’t come any harder, any more niche or manic. But in the center of the frentic action one of the most beautiful flowers of the gaming world is blooming: bullets are cast at you in ever changing rhythms, ever evolving patterns of lightpulses and color. If you want to survive you got to get into the groove with them.
Trying to imagine an artificial intelligence’s consciousness calls for psychedelic imagery. like psychedelic substances, computers and networks are technologies designed to expand our mind. As a technological artifact computers are perfectly logical and coherent, as user interfaces they try to be as accessible as possible; and yet the computer as a conscious being is completely alien to us. This otherness of an artificial mind is the subject of these two videos.
The Rez games are all about a hacker shooting around inside a super intelligent network, trying to protect it. the above video is a trailer for the game The Child Of Eden – the recent addition to the series. I don’t know if the touch screen is really an optional interface, but if it really is, this game is a real trip with it’s cross-consciousness theme and synesthetic approach to soundtrack design.
And here’s another view inside a computer, and a trip down memory lane: The 1980’s classic Tron!
The story is somewhat similar (a hacker fighting his way through a computer…) and the difference in the visual treatment in comparison to Rez should give you some ideas about how dramatically our view of AI has changed.
(Rez link: Corey. Thank you!)
The psychedelic experience allow one to relate differently to the world around us: it removes the differentiation between object and subject, and alters the perception of cause and effect. This is why I think an interface should be a major consideration in a psychedelic work of art; and the reson I picked the video above from Thor Johnson’s highly recommended Vimeo page.
These elastic tentacles reminded me of the game pod from David Cronenberg’s “Existenz”. A cyber-psychedelic masterpiece that will get a post of its own… soon!
Some clips just make you go: Wow!!! Then they make laugh uncontrollably for minutes at a time. And then watch them again, and again, and again. “Chotto Torimasuyo” by 2ch group Hachimiri, is certainly one of them. A crazy mixture of psychic visuals, Flash, hardcore techno music and anime aesthetics, of that special kind that only Japanese people could create.
I could not find any video-streaming version of this one, so you have to press the link and download the .swf file which will play on your browser. But it is worth it, oh yeah!
(Link: Assaf Tamari. Thank!)
There is a very nice article on the experience of exploring the labyrinth of the map. To be found here.
..singing robots. check! duelling alien dancers. check!
what else do we need for a happening of intergalactic proportion? how about a president of the galaxy called Peace? sure! an evil plan to dance the galaxy mad? why not, bring it on! a pink haired pigtailed reporter on 20 cm pleatau space boots to guide us through all this? yeah, keep it going! all of ’em singing and dancing frantically inbetween explosions of color and light? that’s it! space channel 5.
This brave little game did not want to grow up to be a well respected driving simulation or a famous fighting game like most of his brothers and sisters back in the days of the first Playstation. Its honorable aspiration was to become part of the secret psychedelic and anarchic gaming history that started when the first italian 8-bit plumber nibbled away on a mushroom to grow bigger and hit his head even harder.
From the very beginning games have used psychedelic imagary and aesthetics. But LSD did go a step further by getting rid of the action-perception-patterns and management-tasks that usually hold games together. Instead it offered an environment and dreamlike logics to explore. It is a trip with no other purpose but exploring the possibilities.
The links below offer more insight in the actual gaming experience and its excellent use of multi-media:
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70gtHWz70Z0”
“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1TYJ4M76g”
James Paterson (Canada) is a visual artist that blends hand-dawned stream-of-consciousness animation with digital media and interactivity, to create complex environments as gallery installations or on-screen web projects. the above piece is a non interactive video of a project that can be more fully experienced here: http://presstube.com/project.php?id=259.
I recommend installing his trippy screensaver: http://www.presstube.com/project.php?id=218
His personal and collaborative works have been shown at the Design Museum in London, London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Taipei, the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sundance Film Festival, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
The Daily Psychedelic Video 