When we last heard from Strangethink, the experimental video game designer behind Error City Tourist had just created a generative video game full of mind-bending art galleries. For his latest project, Joy Exhibition, Strangethink fuses video game with art software, with the goal being to communicate with a mute alien race using shape and color.Written in the C# programming language, Joy Exhibition is built on the Unity game engine. Strangethink says that the project originated after watching a documentary on Jackson Pollock, in which the painter talked about how he moved around a canvas. Most of Strangethink’s work has been concerned with space and art in computer game environments, so he naturally became interested in trying to translate Pollock’s idea into virtual space.
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Image courtesy the artist“First person games and art software both have a long history but there seems to have been little crossover between the two,” Strangethink tells The Creators Project. “So I set out to try and make a first person perspective art creation program that tried to replicate some of the physicality of painting on a large canvas in a studio.”The first tests involved drawing solid color lines. The feeling of moving around the canvas to draw, then pulling back to take a look at the results, were enough to inspire Strangethink to continue developing Joy Exhibition. From there, he started adding more brush properties, including softness, color fades, and so on.
Image courtesy the artist“At one point I had these randomized and found it really enjoyable that instead of trying to adjust the brushes to draw what I wanted, I started working with whatever the random generation gave me,” he says. “And the 'painting' process became more about discovery and collaboration with the computer rather than an exercise in control to produce a desired result.”From there, the brushes became spray guns, with both the appearance and effect being procedurally generated and only discoverable through experimentation.
Image courtesy the artist“The effects of each spray gun are also affected by distance from the canvas, and the angle it hits the canvas,” Strangethink says. “So movement around the canvas is necessary in order not only to control the position of the mark but also the color, shape and size of the mark, which fits in incredibly well with my original goal and inspiration.”
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