Gamification for drinking water. Hypothetical app:
1.Goal: Drinking a gallon of water a day 2. Realistic chunks: Drink four 32oz Nalgene bottles every 3-4 hours. 3. Levels: Each level is 32 oz of water. The timer starts and you must finish before it ends. Each level gets the timer get shorter. 4. Reward: You get a specific salty snack after each bottle finished. 5. What could make it fun? See how fast you can chug it. Challenge a friend. 6. Interface: Stars out with empty full jug on screen. You tap and screen yells “GO!” and displays timer in minutes. When timer is up you need to have at least drank at 32 oz benchmark and the displayed jug should look a quarter emptier.
7.
Challenge Finish a whole gallon of water in one day.
Choice Drink it all at once or space it out throughout the day
Change
Carry one 32 oz bottle to refill four times or
carry 2 32oz bottles to refill twice or
carry one whole gallon jug of water to sip throughout the day.
Chance If you don’t hit the 32 oz benchmark in time you lose out on the specific snack for that tier.
Simulation is the main technique that appeals to me. This is because as a 3D artist I use a computer to create virtual renditions of the real life objects. We can simulate artificial worlds using 3D software and game engines. Within these softwares there are even simulation tools that can mimic the qualities and movement of water, fire, wind, earthquakes, bullet ricochets, gravity physics, etc. (whatever you can think of).
So, this technique of simulation is already largely used as an art form. Computer games are art. 3D re-enactments of a meteor hitting the earth on the History Channel is art. Trees blowing in the wind inside a virtual reality space is art.
These simulations are helping with everyday tasks and careers. Doctors are doing virtual simulations of surgeries. Construction workers are doing virtual training of equipment. The military is even training for combat using simulations.
My goal is to get so good at mimicking real life situations in the virtual world that they become indistinguishable from the real thing. Technology will keeping getting better in game engines like Unity and Unreal, as well as special effects softwares like Houdini, and 3D softwares like Blender, Maya, Cinema4D, etc.
A game that left a significant mark on me is “Death Stranding”. It only came out a couple years ago, but I think it’s one of the most unique and beautiful games ever made.
First of all it features an incredibly trippy sci-fi plot that goes something like this (without spoilers):
The Death Stranding was a cataclysmic event in which ghostly “Beached Things” suddenly appeared in the world of the living, triggering a massive amount of simultaneous explosion-like “voidouts” all over the world that eradicated everything caught up in them, leaving nothing but craters in their wake. As a result of the Death Stranding, previously undiscovered particles known as chiralium appeared in our world, rain turned into “timefall” that rapidly ages whatever it touches, and those BTs wander the world in rainy areas, pulled magnetically towards life if disturbed. Ruffle enough of their feathers and eventually their attack on the living causes more voidouts, too. Naturally, this leaves the remnants of humanity turtled up inside isolated cities, thus creating the need for transporters: those brave enough to make the journey to deliver essentials from one city to another. Porters are some of the most valuable people in this death stranded world.
So, you basically play as postman in an apocalyptic wasteland avoiding bandits and weird Lovecraftian creatures (which a fetus you carry in a tank helps you detect, by the way). It stars incredible actors like Mads Mikkelsen, Norman Reedus, Margaret Qualley, and even Guillermo Del Toro, and regularly has crazy 4th-wall breaking moments. The game just oozes with charm.
Let’s break this game down in terms of Darran Jamieson’s four elements or layers of a game:
Challenge: Deliver goods from point A to point B while avoiding things that will kill you and/or rob you. Also, you must keep balance on rough terrain so that you don’t fall and lose or destroy your cargo.
Choice: You can add materials to stations to build roads to help you transport goods faster at later times. You can choose to mash buttons quickly to run faster, but this will make balancing a lot harder. You can do delivery side-missions or just stick completely to main quests to progress the story. You can choose how to stack cargo on your body to distribute weight easily.
Change: You can upgrade components. You can craft mechanical legs that give you more balance, speed, strength. You can progress through different environments. You can make different types of weapons to deal with different types of enemies.
Chance: You have to get from A to B but there is always a chance it could start raining at some point on your route. The presence of rain means that the ghostly things could appear. There is also a chance that you will stumble across a bandit sensor beacon that will ping your location, alerting them to your presence. There might be an avalanche or rock slide that occurs as you are trying to traverse a mountain pass. Players from other games might have left you a rope or a ladder (connected through internet access) to make it across a rough patch of terrain.
Can people learn empathy through the use of virtual reality? Recall a time when you were reading a novel or watching a powerful scene in a movie which moved you to tears. This scene might have made you reflect on your own life and your relation to others within it, causing you to be overwhelmed with emotions in that brief moment. Imagine this effect amplified to a more prolonged and intimate level. We all know the phrase “walk a mile in someone’s shoes”, but current trends in VR are making it more of a literal possibility. Empathy is key in fostering social connections with others. It allows a much higher degree of interpersonal understanding than does simple communication. Hearing sad stories might give us pause for a moment, but it’s easy to quickly return focus to our own lives. However, to truly relate to those stories on a personal level and actually feel what someone is feeling is a powerful force for social progress. After all, humans are a sum of our experiences, therefore to experience something is more impactful than to simply imagine it.
New VR experiences and studies are occurring which show promise in helping people understand experiences of the homeless, victims of war, elders with dementia, prison life and more. Immersive technologies could be becoming more popular in the field of journalism. What better way to convey the news than placing people in the center of the world’s most pressing issues? Back in the 1960s Marshall McLuhan told us “the medium is the message”. Virtual reality is becoming the new medium to deliver the message, and is a message in itself that points to the human desire to understand things in an ever-increasing depth. It has potential to reshape journalism in a way that allows society to interact with news and information in exciting ways. Tapping into multiple senses and throwing the viewer into the story can give the news an unprecedented feeling of realness, and this has the power to dramatically alter the relationship between audience and content.
In our current political climate there exists so much vitriol over the many immigrants and refugees coming to the United States. Many Americans are calling for closed borders, often painting refugees in a very negative light. Project Syria, a 2014 journalism study from Nonny de La Peña, is a VR experience that places you in the shoes of a Syrian child in the middle of a war-torn landscape. It is a two-part experience. The first part takes place in a busy street of Aleppo. In the middle of singing a rocket explodes near you filling your view with dust and debris.You are dazed, shellshocked, and hear high pitch ringing in your ears. The people around you are running, screaming, crying, and lying on the ground dead. The second part places you in the middle of a refuge camp as the number of refugees around you grows exponentially.
You can experience solitary confinement with The Guardian’s 6 x 9. This is a 360 VR video that has you sitting a 6 foot by 9 foot sterile room as prison stats are presented to you as screams and bangs echo down the corridors. Various narrators give some reasons why people are sent into solitary confinement, and sometimes these reasons are as trivial as looking at a guard the wrong way or taking extra toilet paper. A prisoner could be serving a year-sentence initially, but end up serving years more existing in this bleak state of despair called solitary. At one point you begin experiencing symptoms of psychosis: floating in the air, seeing cracks running down the walls, blurred vision, auditory hallucinations all around you, etc.
Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab released Becoming Homeless: A Human Experience. The experiment posits that there is a misconception that becoming homeless is due to your personal choices and seeks to counter that argument. In this experience you are assuming the role of someone who can no longer afford their home. You sell objects in your home to offset owed rent and you watch as your belongings begin to dwindle. The goal of this type of experience is to help to break down the barrier of the “us versus them” mentality. Results of this study revealed that participants were more likely to agree with statements that empathized with the plight of the homeless, and these attitudes were shown to continue on afterwards. As part of the study, participants of the VR group and others from a condition group (who only read a narrative) were asked to sign a petition supporting affordable housing. 82% of the VR participants signed versus 67% of those that only read a narrative. In the second study, 85% of the VR participants signed, whereas only 63% of the narrative participants did.
Although, there are blunders in the mission to elect VR as the ultimate tool for generating empathy as shown during a livestream by Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and head of social virtual reality, Rachel Franklin. Their intent was to demonstrate the empathetic qualities of VR as they toured a post-hurricane, flooded Puerto Rico. However, it came off as tone-deaf and self-promoting. The two smiled and high-fived in front of flooded homes and people in turmoil. Their positive attitudes superimposed on a backdrop of a devastated community was truly in bad taste. Worst of all, their attempt to display empathy through promotional use made the concept look tacky. What it looked like was cheap disaster tourism. They did not seem to empathize with anything going on around them in the virtual space. You could tell their head space was still locked back into the comfort of their real-life homes, which is about the farthest thing away from the horrendous conditions being displayed on screen. They even seemingly become bored at one point and teleport back to their luxurious offices. The charade cheapened the whole promise of the experience.
This is the issue with VR being completely immersive as to create pure empathy. In Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving-Image Media and the Spectator, Lev Manovich remarks, “regardless of what visual forms can be presented before the eye (diagrams, photographs, film images), they are subjected to complicated processing by the nervous system, which constructs its own internal representations”. It’s all about our personal subjectivity of individual consciousness. Each human interprets events in an entirely unique way. It may have been Zuckerberg’s conscious intention to make his viewers empathize by tricking them into believing they are in a disaster zone, but it’s only a trick. The fact that you can take the VR headset off and teleport back to your safety zone detracts from the experience.
But this personal subjectivity is what makes us unique individuals. In the 1980s, Jaron Lanier mused about VR tech eventually being completely fused with mental processes. He talked about an age of “post-symbolic communication” that invalidates simple language allowing everyone to be connected and sharing the same understanding — ‘perfect empathy’. Lev Manovich seems to have a more dystopian take on Lanier’s idea: “why should there be any need for linguistic symbols if everyone rather than being locked into a ‘prison-house of language’, will happily live in the ultimate nightmare of democracy – the single mental space that is shared by everyone, and where every communicative act is always ideal”. I have to agree with Manovich lest humanity eventually transform into something like Star Trek’s ‘Borg Collective’.
The Zuckerberg incident makes one question the true intentions of some using VR for seemingly charitable reasons. Media theorist Daniel Rushkoff makes a point that “The ability to form empathy in a medium has much less to do with how many senses are involved and more to do with how much control the humans have over the exchange and over what they’re doing.” He states that while he believes there are indeed empathetic possibilities with VR that it doesn’t necessarily mean the utilization of more senses and improved fidelity results in a higher level of empathy. Rushkoff also worries that media and technology companies are “making it (VR) less about what people might do with such powerful tools, and more about what they can do to us or sell us, once we’ve jacked into a reality they control.”
At its current state, VR has a long way to go in making real progress in repairing the world’s empathy deficit. More research needs to be done on the long-term effects of VR experiences. At its current fidelity, one simulation is unlikely to have a serious lasting effect on one’s overall empathy, but if it were something that people were exposed to on a regularly basis then it does have potential to change the way people think and feel. There are two obvious sides to VR: escapism through entertainment and empathy through understanding. We must be able to separate the two and not allow VR’s empathetic potential to be overpowered by corporate desires.
The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2016/apr/27/6×9-a-virtual-experience-of-solitary-confinement The Verge (on Zuckerberg) – https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/9/16450346/zuckerberg-facebook-spaces-puerto-rico-virtual-reality-hurricane
Lev Manovich’s ‘Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving-Image Media and the Spectator’
Len Manovich’s ‘The Language of New Media’
Douglas Rushkoff, Guernica Magazine – https://www.guernicamag.com/ava-kofman-will-virtual-reality-make-us-feel-better/
Based on the readings (and the videos in the 06 Data & Information chapter) above, do you think that big data and data analytics introduce real threats to human culture or do they promise revolutionary changes that will ultimately benefit human life? What can we do to ensure that our digital technologies work to improve human and nonhuman lives?
Right now, I see big data as more of an immediate threat, but it also seems futile to resist because we’re all continually complicit in its spread. It really is a double-edged sword and it is easily abused. Whoever wields its power can use data for financial gain through behavior-monitoring or to track/eliminate dissidents. We need to make sure everything is above-board and stay constantly vigilant.
Big Data has its positives. It fosters social innovation and creates a more informed scientific community. Analyzing large amounts of data can give us more insight into carbon emissions, help increase quality of life, cure diseases, design better infrastructure, etc.
Ethical standards regarding the use of data must be imposed and closely monitored. It should be incredibly transparent and available to the public.
After reading the Social Media chapter, the Rushkoff chapter on Identity and watching the documentary Life 2.0 (above), write a blog post about being in two places at once in the digital age. How has this “virtuality” changed our ideas of self, society and community? How might VR social media impact our embodied relationships? If you were going to design a VR social media platform what would it be like? What concerns and/or hopes do you have about the future of a virtual social life?
Many people lead double lives through their virtual avatars. In MMORPGs you can work hard, collect the most coveted gear, overpower and dominate opponents, form friendships with others that share the same goals, get married, take on a new gender identity or sexuality, etc. People often feel safer living their truths or speaking unpopular opinions under the guise of their avatar. Many have more confidence in their virtual form than they do in their corporeal form. When people speak truthfully ideas can flourish and society can become more socially progressive. However, there could be a downside to this as well. There’s the physical: our bodies could start wasting away form malnutrition, lack of exercise and sunlight, etc. We might be too timid in real-life situations.
I am very excited about the future of VR. While my mind does sometimes drift to dystopian themes involving VR-addled junkies, I do see infinite potential for good. More VR programs could be developed that help with immersion in content. Imagine Instagram feeds, but the ability to live out a simulation of the picture instead of just seeing your friend there from one angle. The more immersion of the senses, the more experiences will resonate with others. When people feel something on a multi-sensual level they might be able to empathize more deeply.
Digital technology easily remediates the narrative arts of all other media (radio, movies, tv, fiction), but it also introduces new possibilities that may challenge our very notions of narrative – that a story needs a beginning, middle and end, for example. Which of the above digital texts engage you most and why? Discuss how we can approach new digital works that present stories in unfamiliar and challenging ways. What are your thoughts/experiences of how the digital, hyperlinks and the web are changing the art of storytelling.
I enjoyed “With Those We Love Alive” the most. I liked that we were prompted to put on headphones since it allows you to block out distractions and hear things more clearly. The music was almost trance inducing. I feel like the multi-modal mediums used really helps with engagement in the project. It sucks you into a fictional world, the choices seeming nonsensical and dreamlike. I naturally want to make meaning out of the randomness. Many lines read like poetry.
I appreciate this attempt at immersion within a HTML-based world. I think focusing on creating an immersive experience with digital art going forward will really push the boundaries of how art is felt and perceived. Virtual reality will continue to advance, becoming more and more seamless, which in turn will allow people to resonate more with storytelling and simulated experiences.
Storytelling is already being explored in new ways. The Black Mirror movie on Netflix is one major example I thought of which reflects the “Choose your own adventure” style of these hypermedia pages and twines. The viewer can choose how the story progresses based on prompts during pauses. I have also seen numerous video games that are time-based and have options of how to respond in quick-thinking situations. Your decisions or indecision can result in many different outcomes.
Vannevar Bush and Ted Nelson were visionary thinkers seeking solutions to the problems of information overload and hierarchical storage systems that seemed to stifle human creativity and associative thought. Now that we have the World Wide Web, in what ways have these visions of Bush and Nelson been realized? What remains unrealized?
“Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified” – Vannevar Bush
This quote basically predicted the internet, but more specifically, Wikipedia. This and every page on the internet contains Nelson’s “hypertext” idea, linking you with a click to infinite amounts of knowledge. The linking goes even further with “hypermedia” which explains JPEGs, GIFs, Flash players, embedded Youtube videos, Spotify, etc, etc.
People naturally want to categorize everything, but the hierarchical structures of the past couldn’t possibly arrange all data at the time in a truthful, accurate way. Like an old library, this is a branching system, not like the rhizomatic system of the internet. Nelson’s “Xanadu” concept still remains somewhat unrealized. If you post some artwork online, for instance, the source of the creation will sometimes be lost and you can lose credit for your work. The hyperlinks we have don’t trace back to the original. The state of copyright today is in disarray.
According to Benjamin, how does mechanical reproduction change culture? What do you think are the consequences of digital reproduction on cultural expression today? Can a digital work have anything like an “aura? How does the culture of remix confirm of refute Benjamin’s ideas?
Mechanical reproduction created a cultural shift in how we understand and process art. It allowed the masses to engage with artworks that were normally reserved for the eyes of higher classes. Art has the ability to manipulate and influence the spectator, and it can be used as a political tool to change socio-cultural attitudes. Mechanical reproduction resulting in the printing press allowed Martin Luther to nail his 95 page theses to a Wittenburg church door, forever changing history.
One specific consequence of digital reproduction in today’s culture expression is what I see as the ‘death of photography’. Our social feeds are flooded with Instagram selfies, highly polished photoshops, 3D recreations, better and better phone cameras, etc. Capturing something in its temporal essence through classic photography might be a thing of the past.
I think there are indeed ways that digital art can retain an “aura of authenticity”. Certain types of VR experiences come to mind. Although, Benjamin might reduce to this to just a fake simulation.
I generally am not a huge fan of the idea of an “aura of authenticity. Even the remix can be made into something original and even be original in a temporal sense. Everything is a remix of something ideas that came before. Remixing and sampling can be manipulated in ways that sound completely different than the source material, essentially becoming its own thing. The live of experience of a DJ show exists in an aura.
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Nelson’s “Xanadu” concept still remains somewhat unrealized. If you post some artwork online, for instance, the source of the creation will sometimes be lost and you can lose credit for your work. The hyperlinks we have don’t trace back to the original. The state of copyright today is in disarray.
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