This week, I’m settling in from my trip to Leicester, UK, where I attended the Kyma International Sound Symposium to premiere my new work, Interesting Decisions. The piece is a digital game that creates music through player interaction with a procedurally generated world. In the guise of a retro, neon-packed walking-simulator, Interesting Decisions engages with issues of the homogenizing effects of technology, as well raising questions about new trends of video-game voyeurism.
More thoughts on the Kyma symposium later (I’m still processing an fascinating remark from Christian Vogel where he said “I’ve started thinking of my studio like a network rather than a chain”).
For now, I have some catching up to do.
At the end of my performance in Leicester, the game displayed a message that one could “download the game at simonhutchinson.com” a little prematurely.
Notice that I blame the game for this.
So, with apologies to the delay, here is the game (available in Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux versions):
By necessity, the audio and graphics have been simplified for this standalone version. The piece I performed at the symposium sent OSC messages from the game in Unity to Kyma, and, in order to do a “anyone can play” distribution, I had to bounce out the audio and bring them into Unity, so there’s less nuance in the real-time audio, but I’m sure this is a compromise that game developers must make all the time.
If you’re interested in the original work, you can see a video of a “studio” performance here:
Congratulations, Simon!
This is an awesome little world you’ve created. I very much enjoyed this!
Thanks to both of you! It was a really fun project.
I hope all is well out west. Let’s catch up soon!
Hi,
So. I just “bought” a copy. Can you tell me more about any Linux dependencies? I’m running the latest Ubuntu (64-bit) and getting the error:
./InterestingDecisions.x86: error while loading shared libraries: libGL.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Is it a 32-bit library issue? (I’d rather not clutter my system with lots of 32-bit libraries when there are already existing 64-bit versions of the same libraries. I may just try on a different OS on someone else’s system.) And, truth be told, the only Kyma system I regularly have access to is owned by the university and typically hooked up to a Mac. I just wanted to see what the code would do on my Linux box.
Thanks.
Hi Kevin,
I just shot you an eMail. Let’s work it out.