CONTRIBUTOR	invited speaker speaker	refereed paper artist/tech. talk	panel chair panellist	artwork music	co-authors collaborators
Troy Innocent

Centre for Electronic Media Art and Faculty of Art & Design Monash University Australia	{} {}
Troy.Innocent@ArtDes.monash.edu.au	http://www.iconica.org

TITLE: artefact

ABSTRACT: Artefact is an exhibition of digital media art that explore the language of video and computer games. The works focus on the shift in perception between the real and the simulated by accentuating errors, or "artefacts", in the representation of reality. The exhibition comprises Mixed reality an interactive installation of icons constructed in real reality, and Semiomorph, an immersive environment that investigates the idea of semiotic morphism.

synthia

Error. Within the field of computer graphics, the term "artefact" refers to an error or anomaly that has occurred in the synthesis of an image. The use of this term comes from its broader meaning as "a feature not naturally present, introduced during preparation or investigation". Computer graphic artefacts are often a side effect of the algorithm used to construct a synthetic image. Artefacts could be glitches in sound, patterns that appear when an image is transformed, or the unnatural appearance of objects in a virtual world.

Electronic space is language. Conventions and rules for the appearance, placement, and behaviour of virtual objects in as space are beginning to emerge. This is particularly true for video and computer games, which offered some of the earliest experiences of realtime, interactive environments. Spatial cues suggest pathways for navigation through worlds. Techniques for structuring space and time that include the player as an agent in the narrative. Iconography that employ image, sound and action. All of these represent new ways of signifying meaning, and comprise part of what we may call the language of digital media.

Interface. The mediation between the player and the electronic space occurs via the interface. Typically, the interface is transparent in a simulation, as the goal is to recreate the immediacy of direct experience. However, the interface can be made opaque and interactivity itself used to communicate the idea or message. In this way focus is drawn toward the mode of interaction and rules of engagement with an artificial reality, and how this constructs or conveys meaning.

glypha

Space making. Formalising and defining electronic space seems to be an impossible task. Every discovery leads to another that opens up new possibilities, every limitation that is understood reveals further glitches in the system. In my exploration of electronic space, I have focussed on creating personal spaces that are particular to my own intuitions and experience. The collection of icons, sounds, game characters, and spaces represent a personal language in response to the themes that have motivated the work. In artefact, this body of media forms the building blocks of the game world and installation, with the elements being placed in different contexts to explore the multiplicity of their meaning.

Mixed Reality
Interactive installation

"Generally, the world-building philosophy of videogames is one in which certain aspects of reality can be modelled in a realistic fashion, while others are deliberately skewed, their effects caricatured or dampened according to the game's requirements." - Trigger Happy, Steven Poole

characters

Shift. Icons and avatars made flesh. Photorealistic computer graphics make virtual reality more real and less virtual. Artificial life gives computer programs the capacity to learn, grow and evolve. Augmented reality projects the world of data into the world of the living. Digital media have become more real. At the same time, real life has become programmed, encoded and more artificial. Life has become programmable through genetic engineering. It has been encoded by systems for information management. Much of our environment is synthetic – constructed reality. Mixed reality reconstructs the icons and entities in Semiomorph as large-scale plastic and wood models. The immersive environment of Semiomorph is rendered in real space, the user relocated back into their own body. Sensors, lights, and speakers superimpose a layer of data onto the gallery space – and enabling interaction with the space.

Semiomorph. Immersive environment / game system

"Digital machines are born shape-shifters. Being digital means being able to reinvent yourself at the click of a mouse: morphing effortlessly from calculator to spreadsheet to word processor to video-editing console and back again." - Interface Culture, Stephen Johnson

Semiotic morphism is the systematic translation of meaning between sign systems. The translation is performed by a computer program that relies on systematic structures of complex signs to determine levels of meaning and relationships between signs. Media and content (meaning) become seperated as the same message may morph between different forms of representation.

Representation. Semiomorph explores this concept in an immersive environment, using the visual language of video and computer games as the starting point for its sign system. The environment is alternately represented as text, diagram, icon or simulation. Each representation is personified by a game character which explores how these forms of representation themselves have shifted simply by becoming digital. Word is Mt.Ke,I-t, diagram is D-Glypha, icon is Specular, and simulation is Realamon. These game characters are archetypal artefacts, capturing aspects of digital media and electronic game language.

The environment also employs the narrative structure of video and computer games, with rules and goals determining the gameplay: "The goal of the game is to collect enough [ICON] energy points to create a significant shift in the graphical representation of the world. This is a semiomorph. During play you may shift your mode of representation, which will change the rules of play. You must avoid opposing entities and [ICON] blast icons. The relationships within the world can change suddenly through activation of [ICON] power-ups and [ICON] muticons."

icons

Immersion. A strong connection between the viewer and their avatar is established through the direct control and immediate feedback in the game simulation. This connection is often strong enough to that, psychologically, the viewer is inside the game. This creates a sense of immediacy that enhances the illusion of even highly abstract spaces being somehow real. Artificial realities are experienced in a mode of perception usually reserved for real experience.

Artefact manifests a hybrid, intermedia space with the meanings within the work existing in several media simultaneously. Collisions of meaning, both accidental and intended, occur within the installation space, screen space, and web space. The work does not exist entirely on the screen, or in the sound, or in the arrangement of models in the gallery, but crosses over all of these forms.

ABOUT: Troy has been exploring new aesthetics and languages endemic to computers since 1989. Troy sees interaction as a key element of the multimedia experience, be it between an audience or within the electronic space of the computer itself. Troy's work has been exhibited widely in Australia, and overseas. Idea-ON>!, 1994, used a collection of personal, abstract symbols as the interface to a collection of virtual worlds. In 1996, Troy explored the synaesthetic relationship between sound and image in Psy-Vision, creating a digital language of iconic figuration and synthetic abstraction. His other works include Iconica and Sound Form which was exhibited at the First Iteration exhibition Process Philosophies.

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