GAMES BIG Jingwen Eugene Kua Semester 2, 2016 t: Alex Holland +Julian Rutten
//It_begins_in_another _world.........
BIG GAMES
4
CONTENTS 6
Introduction
8
Conceptualisation 10 Pokémon Go 12 Augmented Landscapes 16 Computers and Simulators 18 A Burglar’s Guide To The City 22 Algorithmic Engagement 24 Intervention Through Gaming 31 Conclusion 32 Learning Outcomes 35 Appendix
42
Bibliography
72 101 108 108 111 !!! I am just a regular fellow who enjoys drawing and learning anything about everything. I grew up mostly in my beloved kampung - Malaysia, and somehow I have grown to enjoy the “cold” winters of Melbourne. I believe that design is the labour of love, where the best works done always resonate something deep within you. I am a believer in designing from the heart, rather than from the mind: design poetry that nourishes the soul, rather than over-intellectualising and over-complicating, only using the analytical mind when needed. I am a huge fan of playful and imaginative speculative projects being a form of research through design, opening up unusual and exciting ways of thinking, sensing and feeling the world that we know very little of. I would like to think of myself as an explorer, or even a detective, using design as an avenue for [self]discovery.
INTRODUCTION
6
Snippets of my work from second year
ABOUT ME
7
DESIGN FUTURING
CONCEPTUALISATION
9
Pokémon GO The smartphone app Pokémon GO provides an excellent example of the impact an augmented reality interface can have on our daily lives. Being in a form of a free game, it is widely accessible to the public, thus allowing it to become a global cultural phenomenon. 1 Pokémon
GO is accessible and widely distributed.
2 Mapping
of all Pokéstops and gyms in central Melbourne.
Players are tasked in exploring the world to discover and catch as many Pokémon as possible. The mechanics of the game is rather simple: the movement of the player, tracked by GPS, corresponds to the movement in the virtual game world. The rest of the interface is interacted via simple swiping actions.
3 In-game
In the initial stages, the game seemed particularly addictive, and very often, finding my eyes glued onto the screen. Because it requires one to move physically from place to place, I found myself very engaged with the game – my awareness was drawn into the virtual space. With multiplayer features like gyms and Pokéstops, the game creates an overlaid virtual space that would easily replace the real world.
CONCEPTUALISATION
notice (left) alerting players to be aware of their surroundings, as people become more glued to their phones (bottom).
10
4 State
Library of Victoria on a normal Friday night, post-Pokémon GO release.
The impact of the game can be seen in wide ranging ways: from instances of people discovering corpses to lure traps made by robbers. Many people have found that the game encouraged exploration of their surroundings which are often taken for granted, as well as providing a platform for meeting people. Perhaps, the most powerful real world effect it has is the mapping data it offers to designers and planners: an accurate re-delineation of the urban fabric dictated by the players; this was near impossible prior to the creation of GPS-enabled games. There have been cases of large crowds gathering and disturbing the conditions of sensitive areas, such as wildlife reserves and residential blocks. It can also be said that instead of facilitating interaction with the urban fabric and other players, it has done the opposite instead - players having their awareness directed into another realm, springing up fatal cases of negligence and accidents. Perhaps, more worryingly, Pokémon GO points towards a future similar to that of Keiichi Matsuda’s Hyper-Reality, where we face a sensory overload every single waking moment.
A1 DESIGN FUTURING
5 Map
6 An
overstimulated vision of the future depicted in Matsuda’s Hyper-Reality.
showing the linking the various Pokéstops and gyms in central Melbourne.
11
Augmented Landscapes Instead of a Frankenstein vision of reality, there is a more benign viewpoint offered by speculative designers Mark Smout and Laura Allen. The duo’s area of design research heavily involves natural phenomena and the geomorphic field, working across multiple scales ranging from ecologies, to buildings, to installations, and to instruments. Key to their work is the playful and creative use of technology and mechanical instruments as design generators and tools to expose hidden processes.
1 Infractus
2 L.A.
Recalculated
By using design to research the natural world we often take for granted, Smout Allen exposes the surprising invisible streams of data and processes generated by the environment around us, which are ever changing. By doing so, they provide us with updated lenses in which we can use to respond to the rapid changes in the environment. 3 British
Exploratory Land Archive
The project entitled Neo-Natures: Lanzarote, presented in the form of drawings overlaid onto geographical surveys of the Lanzarote lava fields, demonstrates the hydrologic cycle on and below the surface of the earth, and speculates on how these types of landscapes can respond to future adverse scenarios brought upon by climate change.
CONCEPTUALISATION
12
L.A. Recalculated envisions the megacity as an instrument containing enormous amounts of physics equipment and geological survey tools, used to investigate, study and mitigate the seismic events that grapple the city. In essence, designing with nature’s processes as the main concern.
4 Neo-Natures:
Meniscus
In regards to contemporary planning issues, the duo worked with ScanLabs to create Infractus – a piece on the contentious debate on preservation of public housing estates. The group used 3D scanners to digitise the Robin Hood Gardens into a model, which was then made physically into a glass object by crystal laser etching. By being open and playful in using a wide range of technological devices, many more design opportunities reveal themselves.
5 Envirographic
Instruments 6 Neo-Natures:
Lanzarote
In the current climate of design, perhaps the only way forward is to use technology in a sensitive yet creative manner, without the meaningless parlour tricks of the current crop of technocratic architects; just as how Smout Allen playfully speculates on future augmented landscape scenarios, we can combine technology and our wild imagination to design towards a more ecologically integrated future.
A1 DESIGN FUTURING
13
DESIGN COMPUTATION
CONCEPTUALISATION
15
Computers And Simulators
Computers have been typically used as a passive design tool, where the designer largely works out a design with his own mind and the computer is an expeditor of tasks. While this mode of working is a valid one, it does not attempt to make full use of the computer’s boundless capabilities. Algorithmic thinking changes that – it pushes the designer to define the design process as an iterative loop, with inputs that drive the outputs – yielding results that would have otherwise been too laborious in an analogue mode.
2 The
form of the gloves respond to meaningful data and as a practical purpose.
CONCEPTUALISATION
1 Projects
like Carpal Skin (by Neri Oxman) are driven entirely by data - in this case, pain signals in nerves.
Perhaps the greatest contribution of the computer is its ability to intelligently collect, process, store infinite amounts of data, opening up opportunities to highlight and expose complicated systems and processes that we are not aware of.
16
Real-time simulations have been aiding us in testing and understanding the physical world in a safe environment, especially in fields of science. This can also be applied to studying more intangible systems and processes such as human behaviour and ecology, which will allow designers to create better and more informed designs.
3 Games
like Block’hood allow players to experience being a designer and planner.
4 Block’hood
requires players to be constantly strategising with synergies and relationships with various components.
A2 DESIGN COMPUTATION
When presented as a game, realtime simulations like Block’hood educate the layperson in a fun and light-hearted way, making them aware of knowledge that is often kept locked in specialist books and journals. By empowering people to understand how the world works, each person will be encouraged to participate in the design and [re]making of our environment, society and culture.
17
A Burglar’s Guide To The City Real-time simulations provide us with a kind of Groundhog Day scenario that can be repeatedly tested and perfected. The act of understanding the built environment as systems of flows of inputs and outputs have been repeatedly used by criminals to their advantage: creating an “algorithm” to commit the perfect robbery.
1 Architect
George Leonidas Leslie exploited his architecture training to become one of the most notorious robbers in the late 19th century. He studied the floor plans of banks, and orchestrated 1:1 robbery ‘rehearsals’ until he got it right.
2 The
‘Roofman’ was involved in almost 40 robbery cases involving McDonald’s outlets across the U.S., aided by their cookie-cutter configurations and the teenage staff demographic.
CONCEPTUALISATION
18
3 Tschumi’s
Manhattan Transcripts Episode 1: The Park professes that “crimes” occur when users of architecture break the pattern of what their respective space/ environment implies.
4 The
OMA-designed Kunsthal was robbed of 7 paintings in 2012, prompting many to believe that the very transparent design of the building allowed the robbers to easily survey and study the building.
A2 DESIGN COMPUTATION
In a way, burglars become building usability experts, analysing buildings and how they intentionally or unintentionally dictate the behaviour of individuals and groups within them. In a similar vein, real-time simulations take us one step closer to becoming experts at understanding the countless interrelated processes and systems in the world.
19
COMPOSITION/GENERATON
CONCEPTUALISATION
21
Algorithmic Engagement
1 Rosario
Hábitat workshops involve rule setting sessions where every community member contributes and agrees to a consensus.
In their truest sense, games are an embodiment of algorithmic thinking: players play and create in a game space defined by a set of accepted rules. When used as a tool to design spatial interventions, games foster communication and engagement between the designers’ expert knowledge and the end users’ experiential knowledge, as seen in the case of the Rosario Hábitat.
More importantly, games foster collaborative competition tied to tangible, measurable outcomes, where players must group together to outmatch the game system, which will result either in a win, lose, draw or a score situation. In doing so, designers can generate and validate design interventions that truly empower the people and their environment.
2 Lot
allocations are played as a game where community members resolve disputes by working together to ‘beat’ the game system.
CONCEPTUALISATION
22
Aside from games, algorithmic thinking can also be found in interactive media art, where agency is given to the audience, enabled by digital feedback loops.
3 Lights
change colour according to the presence of fish.
One such project is the Amphibious Architecture project by The Living and Natalie Jeremijenko, which aimed to educate the public on aquatic ecosystems, as well as provide data for scientists and engineers to reconstruct the ecological shoreline in New York city.
4 People
are able to ‘SMS’ the project (bottom left) which will send real-time data of the waterway. Algorithms and feedback systems allow for the tracking and monitoring of the rehabilitation of the shoreline of NYC (top right).
A3 COMPOSITION/GENERATION
With the huge benefit from feedback loops and real-time responses, perhaps in the near future, every designer will become an interactive media artist, and buildings will be considered as large scale interactive art installations.
23
Intervention Through Gaming
To explore the potential of games in regards to participatory design and systems awareness, a small game will be created as part of an exercise, aimed towards the university community.
1 Exposed
The study will look at using HVAC systems of a building as the basis of the game. Despite being the backbone of a wellfunctioning workspace, these systems are often overlooked as they are considered by many to be an ‘eye sore’.
CONCEPTUALISATION
HVAC systems on the ceilings of the Melbourne School of Design building - they include heating, cooling and ventilation systems.
24
The test game will attempt to engage and sustain the players’ attention by combining the simple yet effective game mechanics of the ‘Roller-A-Ball’ Unity tutorial with the augmentation feature of Pokémon GO.
2 “Pickups”
system from “Roll-A-Ball” involves collecting cubes in the game space.
The aim of the game is to collect as many points (known as pickups) as possible within a given space. These “pickups” are located at spots where the various HVAC systems can be seen, thus making the player aware of them. Different HVAC systems and the different sizes of them will be allocated with different points, as well as different colour-coded “pickups”. To cement the players’ newfound awareness of these systems, the game will ask the players to match the correct colour with the correct HVAC system. 3 Augmented
reality using real-time camera feedback, like Pokémon GO.
A3 COMPOSITION/GENERATION
25
Intervention Through Gaming
To collect the data - the various HVAC systems and their whereabouts - the group will be required to manually survey, record and map them. Once collected, the data will then be mapped out algorithmically using Grasshopper, which creates heat maps to use as guides when planning the game in Unity (involving the placement of “pickups”).
Component: Remap Numbers Component: Bounds - Finds the range of the input list (minimum to maximum).
- Remaps a number range into a different scaled number range, maintaining the input-output ratio.
Component: Closest Point
Component: Domain
Component: Graph Mapper
- Finds distance between the grid points and their respective closests distance to the effector points.
- Number range with variable domain start and end.
- A more powerful version of Remap Numbers, with ability to remap with graph equations.
4 Grasshopper
script for the creation of heat maps (above). Meaning has to be assigned to the otherwise meaningless diagram/ map.
CONCEPTUALISATION
5 Heat
maps (right), when overlaid onto each other and other data, allow us to visualise how the different components of a system interact with each other. In the case of HVACs, it might highlight the network of inlets and outlets, the radii of their effectiveness.
26
A3 COMPOSITION/GENERATION
27
Intervention Through Gaming
Level 2
Level 1
Level 0
Level -1
6 Heat
maps will be generated for each level of the building to allow for a multi-level playing experience, as well as the opportunity to fully understand how the HVACs work in a functioning building.
CONCEPTUALISATION
28
The site of the game is the Melbourne School of Design building, as it’s HVAC systems are exposed and easy to locate. This also allows for the game to be played across multiple floor levels, which helps the players understand the HVAC systems in a more in depth manner.
7 Floor
plans of the site. HVAC systems of the Melbourne School of Design building are relatively “naked”.
From the players’ engagement with the game, we would be able to track their movement and create a network mapping of the HVAC systems of the building (i.e. flow of the systems). As the game data consists of multiple floor levels, it will be possible to create a 3D model of the mapping for visualisation purposes. There may be a potential problem of the GPS have trouble getting signal of the altitude changes, and hence only limiting the game to be played at one floor level.
A3 COMPOSITION/GENERATION
29
A4 CONCLUSION
Algorithmic thinking, empowered by the computer, allows us to rethink design problems and solutions less in a linear fashion, but more in an interrelated way. Rather than dwell on form making processes, digital tools can be used to analyse, process, and intervene on the various hidden processes that surrounds us in our built and unbuilt environments. Games are an under-utilised tool for designers: they allow widespread engagement with the community and simulations that test spatial hypotheses and design scenarios. They are also great education tools. As the role of the architect expands, perhaps it is apt for architects to be known foremost as mediators of flows and systems.
CONCEPTUALISATION
31
A5 LEARNING OUTCOMES I have always believed that computing is an essential skill that everyone should know, at least at a beginner’s level. With computing power and the ability to design your own tools, designers will no longer be restrained by being spectators of technology. The idea of using games as a design tool never crossed my mind much beforehand, as I thought that they remained too much in the “virtual” world to have any impact on the real world. Behind the airy fairy glossy graphics of games, lie very profound real world impacts like engagement, data collection and simulation. I am more inclined to think that it is easier to use computing to improve projects that are more on the physical and practical side, rather than on the conceptual and speculative side. I think I would have definitely made a more stunning boathouse design for my second year project had I learnt how to use algorithmic tools.
CONCEPTUALISATION
32
A6 APPENDIX Week 1
Landscapes / Datascapes
Week 2
Unity: Roll-A-Ball
Week 3
Intensity Mapping
Week 4
Test Game
CONCEPTUALISATION
35
Week 1\\ Landscapes / Datascapes Generating discretised landforms via Grid and Offset components in Grasshopper.
CONCEPTUALISATION
36
A6 APENDIX
37
Week 2\\ Unity: Roll-A-Ball Importing datascape from Rhino into Unity, and creating a basic ‘pickup’ game, with a controllable character.
CONCEPTUALISATION
38
A6 APPENDIX
39
BIBLIOGRAPY Part A A1:Pokemon GO
1+3+4
Lui, Spandas, ‘Where To Find The Best Pokemon In Each Australian Capital On Pokemon GO’,Lifehacker (Australia:Allure Media,2016) < http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2016/07/where-to-find-the-bestpokemon-in-each-australian-capital-on-pokemon-go/> [1 August 2016]
2+5
Niantic Inc., ‘Ingress Intel Map’, Ingress Intel Map (n.d.) <https://www.ingress.com/intel - MAPPING x 2> [1 August 2016]
6
Matsuda, Keiichi, ‘hyper-reality’,Hyper-Reality (Keiichi Matsuda Ltd., 2016) < http://hyper-reality.co/> [1 August 2016]
A1:Augmented Landscapes
1
Smout Allen, ‘Infractus: the taking of Robin Hood Gardens’, Smout Allen (2015) <http://www.smoutallen.com/infracts-thetaking-of-robin-hood-gardens/> [1 August 2016]
2
Smout Allen, ‘L.A. Recalculated at the Chicago Architectural Biennial’, Smout Allen (2015) <http://www.smoutallen.com/ larecalculated/ > [1 August 2016]
3
Smout Allen, ‘British Exploratory Land Archive’, Smout Allen (2015) <http://www.smoutallen.com/british-exploratory-landarchive/> [1 August 2016]
4
Smout Allen, ‘Neo-Natures: Meniscus Model’, Smout Allen (2015) <http://www.smoutallen.com/meniscus-model> [1 August 2016]
5
Smout Allen, ‘Envirographic Instruments’, Smout Allen (2015) <http://www.smoutallen.com/envirographic-instruments> [1 August 2016]
6
Smout Allen, ‘Neo-Natures: Lanzarote’, Smout Allen (2015) <http://www.smoutallen.com/neo-natures-lanzarote> [1 August 2016]
CONCEPTUALISATION
42
A2:Computers and Simulators
1
Oxman, Neri, ‘Carpal Skin’,media.mit.edu (Neri Oxman,2011) <http://web.media.mit.edu/~neri/site/projects/carpalskin/ carpalskin.html> [7 August 2016]
2
Oxman, Neri, Neri Oxman: On Designing Form (PopTech,2010) in Vimeo <https://vimeo.com/7806194> [Accessed 7 August 2016] Images taken from the game Block’Hood (Plethora Project, 2016)
3+4
A2:A Burglar’s Guide To The City
from <http://www.plethora-project.com/blockhood/>
1
Manaugh, Geoff, ‘An architect turned evil and became the greatest bank robber in history’, New York Post (NYP Holdings,2016) <http://nypost.com/2016/04/10/an-architectturned-evil-became-the-greatest-bank-robber-in-history/> [7 August 2016]
2
Demian Bulwa et al., ‘Escaped robber returns to annals of weird crime/ Cops say ‘Roofman’ lived in large store’, SFGate (Hearst, 2005) <http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Escaped-robberreturns-to-annals-of-weird-crime-2706176.php#photo-2169538 > [7 August 2016]
3
Tschumi, Bernard,‘The Manhattan Transcripts Project, New York, New York, Episode 1: The Park’, The Collection (MoMa, 2016) <http://www.moma.org/collection/works/19?locale=en> [7 August 2016]
4
Boon, Lex, ‘The art of stealing’, nrc.nl (NRC Media Holding BV, n.d.) <http://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/> [7 August 2016]
1+2
Josh Lerner, ‘What Games Can Teach Us about Community Part icipation: ticipatory Urban Development in Rosario’s Villas’, Places We Live: Slums and Urban Poverty in the Developing World,(2010), 1-24
3+4
The Living, ‘Pier 35 EcoPark’, The Living (2016) <http://www. thelivingnewyork.com/> [10 August 2016]
A3: Intervention Through Gaming
6+7
John Wardle Architects and NADAA, ‘Melbourne School of Design University of Melbourne’, Archdaily (Archdaily,2016) <http:// www.archdaily.com/622708/melbourne-school-of-design-universityof-melbourne-john-wardle-architects-nadaaa> [12 August 2016]
Image
pg. 40 pg 41
NASA, ‘Picture Gallery’, HUBBLESITE (NASA,2016) <http:// hubblesite.org/gallery/album/galaxy/> [12 August 2016]
A3: Algorithmic Engagement
BIBLIOGRAPHY
43