Palavras-chave: counter-visualities, immersive ecologies, ecological gaming, volumetric landscapes, posthuman worldbuilding
This paper finds its starting point in an exploration of the emerging hybrid visualities enabled by the recent expansion of game engine technologies into mainstream tools for the production of visual culture - images, no longer confined to the flat panels of digital screens, are increasingly becoming volumetric, immersive, and mutable. Able to conjure worlds and facilitate embodiment on an unprecedented scale, whilst powered by ever-increasing processing power and visual accuracy, the hybrid ecologies brought into being through such technologies become performative and affectively charged. Consequently, in a time where the automation of the camera is swiftly being replaced by that of the blackboxed computational structures of virtual production systems, addressing the networked visual ecologies produced through immersive technologies becomes a crucial point for theoretical discussion.
As mainstream tools emerging out of our contemporary monoculture, game engines have traditionally been employed both by large-scale ludic productions and small indie productions for the crafting of play; having steadily evolved across the years, the rendering capabilities of these tools have reached new heights, situating them as the preferred production tools across visual disciplines such as arts, design and photography. Endless geographical space, immense collections of volumetric content and the promise of responsiveness enabled by networked algorithms are coming together to script new cultural forms.
Amidst these virtual worlds, a fascination with nature remains, where volumetric worlds often feature a multitude of natural elements - as such, a tension (or perhaps a disconnect?) emerges between our felt relationship with nature and the tendency to replicate its manifestation using computer code. As Thomas puts it, “we remain deeply drawn to manifestations of life”, despite living in an increasingly automated visual ecology (2011). This paper aims to explore volumetric ecologies through a posthuman lens, intending to investigate what new possibilities and potentialities can be enabled through an eco-feminist artistic deployment of game engine technologies. It aims to explore ways in which we can speculate using immersive worlds as testing sites for counter-visualities and alternative narratives, attentive to their ability to foster ecological reflection, critique, and engagement with more-than-human epistemologies.
At the confluence of ecological thinking, speculative fiction and posthuman explorations of game environmentalism, this research extends a critique of the Western ideal of the “landscape” into the realm of volumetric space; echoing this tradition of thought, game environments have traditionally been ascribed the role of mere backdrop - a container, or a silent witness for a hero’s actions and activities. Often non-interactive and static, game environments echo the same ideals of separation with nature long established within traditions of Western thought. As Chang puts it, whilst “all computer and console games are environments, not all games are environmental” (2011), emphasising the fact that, despite most game environments being highly visual and expansive virtual ecologies, the majority of these remain functionally inert, becoming frozen in favour of a hero’s quest.
This research aims to call into question this ideological relationship between environment, narrative and spectator within immersive game worlds by exploring the wondrous possibilities that arise when the environment takes centre stage as the interactive subject of a volumetric space - drawing on principles of interconnectedness and posthuman perspectives that foreground more-than-human agencies, rather than singular heroism, this work sets out to explore what LeGuin calls the “other story” through probing ways in which the ecological and the elemental can take on an active role within immersive games, becoming sentient, active and responsive through computational agency.
(The presentation will feature renders and visual elements from an ongoing game world experiment exploring environment-centric speculative worldbuilding)
Teodora Sinziana Fartan is a computational artist, researcher and writer based in London, UK. She is a Lecturer in Computational Media Practices at the University of Westminster and a PhD Researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University. Her current research focuses on practices of worlding, computer-mediated imaginaries, virtual geographies and networked experiences. Teodora’s artistic practice explores the immersive, interactive and intelligent more-than-human entanglements taking shape within algorithmically rendered spaces. Driven by speculative storytelling, her work is situated in the new spaces of possibility opened up by collaborations between software and critical artistic practices - through game engine technologies, creative coding, interactive media and physical computing, Teodora explores immersive and networked states of existence through computer mediation, with a particular focus on the new modes of relational and affective experience rendered into being through interactive, spatial and embodied experiences. Teodora has presented her research and artistic practice both locally and internationally at events such as transmediale, Somerset House, RIXC Festival, the Latvian National Museum of Art, Kingston University and The Photographer’s Gallery London.
Teodora Sinziana Fartan é uma artista computacional, pesquisadora e escritora que mora em Londres, Reino Unido. Ela é professora de Práticas de Mídia Computacional na Universidade de Westminster e pesquisadora PhD no Centro para o Estudo da Imagem em Rede da London South Bank University. Sua pesquisa atual concentra-se em práticas de mundo, imaginários mediados por computador, geografias virtuais e experiências em rede. A prática artística de Teodora explora os emaranhados imersivos, interativos e inteligentes, mais que humanos, que tomam forma em espaços renderizados por algoritmos. Impulsionada pela narrativa especulativa, o seu trabalho situa-se nos novos espaços de possibilidades abertos pelas colaborações entre software e práticas artísticas críticas - através de tecnologias de motores de jogos, codificação criativa, meios interactivos e computação física, Teodora explora estados de existência imersivos e em rede através do computador. mediação, com foco particular nos novos modos de experiência relacional e afetiva que se tornam realidade por meio de experiências interativas, espaciais e corporificadas. Teodora apresentou a sua investigação e prática artística tanto local como internacionalmente em eventos como transmediale, Somerset House, Festival RIXC, Museu Nacional de Arte da Letónia, Universidade de Kingston e The Photographer’s Gallery London.