4. THE STATE OF DARKNESS | MEDIT
During the years of 2018-2019 I was a Pipeline Producer and Real-Time Engine Designer for MEDIT, the Centre of Excellence in Media Innovation and Digital Culture of the Tallinn University and the Baltic Film School. During my residency, one of the main projects created was The State of Darkness. This project was also connected to my Master Thesis research on Volumetric Intelligence: A Framework for the Creation of Interactive Volumetric Captured Characters. The State of Darkness was presented at several conferences and art festivals, for example in the Prague Quadrennial’s Blue Hour 36Q° of 2019.
In the Enactive VR installation The State of Darkness you will find yourself in the prison cell of some unrecognized country, locked up with a distressed person. Your feelings provoked during this encounter are tracked by biosensors, connecting your fate to that of your fellow prisoner. I was reponsible for the entire production of the piece together with director and researcher Pia Tikka, from concept to creation into 3D game engines, all the way to exhibiting in several art festivals and academic conferences.
The concept builds on the idea of symbiotic co-presence of a human and a non-human. Here the theme of non-human narrative is associated with the narrative experience of our virtual character Adam B. Trained by a range of human facial expressions, he has learned to control his expressions in encounters with humans. Adam B will experience his own non-human narrative that is influenced by the behavior of the participant as tracked in real-time by a set of biosensors. In the end, Adam B’s life story emerges from the complexity of his algorithmically simulated mind, hidden from the participant. In the world of State of Darkness human and non-human narratives coexist, the first experienced and lived by the participant, the latter by the artificial character Adam B, as the two meet face-to-face.
Supported by Finnish Cultural Foundation, VCL Lab Aalto University and EU Mobilitas Pluss Grant Tallinn University. The work also generated many academic research papers that got published in several journals.
Presented at:
2020/ Transdisciplinarity in Science and Arts – Capes Print Symposium at UFSM, Brazil
2019/ Actor and Avatar Seminar at ZHdK - Zurich, Switzerland
2019/ Master Class at Actor and Avatar at ZHdK - Zurich, Switzerland
2019/ Prague Quadrennial Blue Hour 36Q° – Prague, Czech Republic
2018/ ICIDS2018 - Dublin, Ireland
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