Two winning works of Prix Ars Electronica 2016 – Computer Animation / Film / VFX category and two virtual reality projects are exhibited at the entrance of Central.
Credit: AlteredQualia, Fractal Fantasy
Uncanny Valley
AlteredQualia (SK), Fractal Fantasy (AT/CA)
(Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica 2016)
Creating totally convincing artificial humans that really have what it takes in the realism department remains a major challenge. And if you slightly miss the mark, then what you achieve is the exact opposite. Because, even if the portrayal comes close to perfection, there’s something about it that’s just not right. It’s kind of … uncanny.
This is precisely the point of AlteredQualia and Fractal Fantasy’s only-seemingly simple, straightforward web experiment. It’s intentionally reduced to three animated heads that react to the user’s mouse movements and thereby trigger sophisticated interplay between visual credibility and disconcerting hyperrealism. The soundtrack and mood created by the lighting contribute to the overall effect.
Credits: Uncanny Valley is the result of a collaboration between the computer graphics programmer AlteredQualia, and the platform Fractal Fantasy. Visuals, code and rendering: Branislav Ulicny, AlteredQualia. Fractal Fantasy, Songs by: Sinjin Hawke, Martyn Bootyspoon, Zora Jones
Head scans courtesy of Ten24.
Credit: Yves Netzhammer
The present searches for its mouth in the reflection of the soup
Yves Netzhammer (CH)
(Honorary Mention Prix Ars Electronica 2016)
The present searches for its mouth in the reflection of the soup is an artistic intervention in the depot of a Museum of Ethnology, including 36 projections and 80 objects in wood or textile. The 36 video works that seem effortlessly and yet very precisely integrated, become just as much an integral part of the visible depot as the innumerable geometrical miniature sculptures which are formally a counterpoint to his opulent formal world. Netzhammer turns us into explorers of our contact with the foreign. And makes us conscious of the fact that the innumerable artifacts that are assembled here have been carefully created by hand in another region and another time. He succeeds in all this with dazzling intensity, gentle irony, and immense empathy.
Credit: Francesca Panetta & Lindsay Poultron, The Guardian, The Mill
6×9: A virtual experience of solitary confinement
Francesca Panetta & Lindsay Poulton (UK), The Guardian (UK/US), The Mill (UK/US)
The Guardian’s first virtual reality piece 6×9 places viewers in an interactive, virtual segregation cell. Created in collaboration with content creation studio The Mill, the film aims to highlight the psychological deterioration and sensory deprivation that can be the effects of long term solitary confinement for the people who have experienced it first hand around the world.
Credits: Francesca Panetta (director), Lindsay Poulton (director), Andrew Mason (creative technologist ), Carl Addy (visual director), Ed Thomas (CGI), Kevin Young (lead creative technologist), Jarrad Vladich (producer), Xaquin GV, Aron Pilhofer.
Credit: Kuba Matyka & Kamila Staszczyszyn
ORGANIC SPACESHIP: ONE
Kuba Matyka & Kamila Staszczyszyn (MELT, PL)
Explore the vast spaces of would-be alien architecture reaching beyond the horizon. Feel the majestic constructs as they pass close by and experience something unparalleled in the real world. Mathematically generated structures live and expand as we approach them – getting more complex and detailed the closer we get. It makes them virtually infinite – limited only by the computing power and perceptible image resolution of our times.
Credits: Kuba Matyka & Kamila Staszczyszyn (MELT), Music: RYSY – “Shimmer”, Sound Design – Wojtek Urbanski
