Sam's Cabinet of Curiosities

  Over the previous weeks on proof of concept, our team had implemented the core tube bending mechanisms of Neon Atelier. For now on, we can start to deliver our effort to other parts of no less important gameplay. One important but yet mentioned element is the inspection procedure before hands-on light tube making. Instead of throwing the player directly to each neon light quest, players are first introduced with a brief outline of the neon light schematics on a VR canvas. Players will use a VR cursor to navigate the schematic, in order to mark significant steps for the upcoming neon light crafting. This prepares the players with early impression over the crafting procedure, relieving the cognitive load during the actual hands-on crafting. The schematics inspection gameplay is built on a VR canvas object. While XR Interaction Toolkit has a  TrackedDeviceGraphicCaster  that can be easier plugged onto an conventional UI Canvas object, the VR cursor detection is only partia...

With tube bending being an core element for neon light craft, as we implemented the tube gripping mechanism, it is natural to us to also work on the  tube blending along the way. Rather then wrriting a separate script, we implemented the  tube bending part by expanding the TubeGripManager from our previous blog , as the bending mechanism follows shortly after an grip step, and also reads for the same active  PathContainer reference used by the  TubeGripManager. We isolate our aims for the bending motion first by setting both an start point and endpoint of the bending. Instead of moving in straight line for the bending, the motion ought to be in curve, accounting for the volume of the tube. While the bending is expected to go forwards only (the quest are not about free forming editing), we do have to account for situation where player release the grip during mid way of bending. In this case, the tube should remain partially bended, with the grip collider in appropriat...

The process of neon light crafting requires nimble grips, as the craftsman brings destinated section onto the torch, softening the section before twisting it into desired curve. In Project Neon Atelier, we implement this process in VR with Unity's XR Interaction Toolkit. XR Interaction Toolkit provides us all-rounded prefabs and a straightforward workflow, saving us from setup the complex VR scenes and controller controller, allowing us to spend more time tailoring it for the interactions of neon light crafting, with features beyond the workflow commonly taught by the online tutorials. While we have yet secured an VR device for testing, the XR Device Simulator from the toolkit allows us to test with the more simple interactions with keyboard and mouse controls. Our implementation relies significantly on the toolkit's NearFarInteractor and XRGrabInteractable components, for the mechanism of tube grabbing. XRGrabInteractable natively supports two-hand grabbing through its Select...

Our VR project Neon Atelier aims at faithfully present neon light craftmanship in a safe, virtual environment. One crucial procedure in neon light making is about bending torched glass tubes into desired shapes. Such malleability of glasswork really challenges our vision about 'a faithfully representation. Our initial attempt for a virtual tube implementation is to rely on Bezier curve, with its capability to represent curves in a mathematical way. We thought about an implementation that begins a glass tube as straight line, adding nodes to it as it collides with the collider flames, plus allowing it to bended into the desire shape.  However, it was not long before we were halted by an inconvenient nature of Bezier curves - its length cannot be calculated mathematically. ( A Primer on Bézier Curves , n.d.) The best we can get is a rough estimation by marching through curves step by step. This fundamentally challenged our expectation to maintain Bezier-based tube's length as pla...

Neon Atelier is a VR experience aiming at presenting the culture behind Hong Kong neon light, beyond its stereotype rooted in visual media. With diversity of perspectives in mind, we expanded our research onto a variety of news, cultural study literature and NGO materials, in order to discover alternative entry points into the neon light topic.  During this progress, we came quite some amount of interesting information. While the substantial amount of available materials are way beyond our project to cover, we were able to select a few pieces that are able to bring out the depth of neon light culture, maintaining the conciseness of our project: The shift in mindset of neon light practitioners : While Hong Kong's neon light scene generally considered at its peak during the 90s, practitioners at the time mostly consider it a form of  business. Despite the passion and talent of some practitioners, the design part is meant to tailored according to client requests, and the tub...

This project is in collaboration with Cheung Hiu Ching Apple, as our final year project in Bsc Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, and is supervised by Dr. Jussi Pekka Holopainen.   Neon light has long been icon for Hong Kong's vibrant street sight, signifying the city's economic prosperity with bold expression from the city's many businesses. The neon scenery has been well captured by the Hong Kong movies, serving as one of the visual expression that stands the test of time. While neon lights are rich in culture context and visual design, it is also based on delicate craftmanship. This inspires us to take on neon light craft as a gameplay experience, and take game as a medium to present a variety of narratives around the vibrant neon light, both of which we found substantial potentials during our ideation process.      For the neon light crafting , fundamental techniques includes elements such as torching, bend...

Identifying himself as a first-generation digital native, the Berlin-based New Zealand artist Simon Denny have long been interested exploring the influence of the advancement in information technology on contemporary humanity. This has especially manifested since his All You Need Is Data (2012), which laid out significant individuals, corporations and organizations of the Internet landscape at the time. Since then, we can see a significant proportion of his works evolved around tech related topic. From  some of Simon Denny's works, we can see how the collage of popular entertainment and gamification creatively and impactfully convey the discussed topics. From example in his exhibition Games of Decentralized Life (2018) and the related revamps in 2019 & 2020, Simon Denny had produced  a series of exhibits that drew inspiration from Milton Bradley's classic boardgame Game of Life . With the his research on the comparison of centralized and decentralized web technologies, the...

In his album Solo for Wounded (1997), Yasunao Tone present a 48-minute long sequence of fragmented and unintelligible sounds. High pitches scratching, stubborn pauses, unexpected burst - the sounds are so extreme, chaotic or even appalling, to the point that one may wonder what kind of eccentric instruments or synthesizing created such glitched sound.  Respective to the work's eccentric texture, production techniques of Solo or Wounded are equally radical ones. Presented by Yasunao Tone, the glitch doesn't only mean "error", not just simple interference but in fact the down-to-bottom distortion. Solo for Wounded is recorded from the mess of audio signal created through scratching and pinched originally audible CDs. Yasunao Tone also overrode to error-correcting system of CD player to made such derailing even more unpredictable, adding more noises that randomizes as the damaged CD deteriorates each time it was played. As a result, Solo for Wounded is fundamentally dif...

The concept of expanding cinema emerged in 1960s an 1970s, when artists of the generation attempted to revolutionize the cinema experience. Their challenged the fact that most of the films only provides passive entertainment, as they add elements to their films in order to activate the audience to engage different activities as they watching.  This opened a movement which artists challenges the existing narrative and format of the cinema. Borrowing from the Lettrist Movement of mid-20th century, artists break down and restructure cinema in to varieties of inter-media perceptual experience. While discarding majority of the traditional narratives, expanded cinemas presents audience with contents from entirely different creative perspectives, as artist can engage the audience at their liberty. Take Jeffrey Shaw' Legible City (1989) as an example. When viewing this artwork, one of audience was invited to ride on a bicycle set up for the installation. This bicycle then controlled the ...

During the lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic , inspired by the shift of face-to-face activities onto digital platforms, artist Pieter Schoolwerth created the Shifted Sims series of paintings to illustrate the chaotic murkiness in between reality and digital realm. In Shift Sims , illusionistic ghosting effects often serve as the center impression. Specific characters and objects shown multiple times, usually in transparent silhouettes which overlay and transform the background into familiar yet distinctive tone and texture.  Shifted Sims #1 (Get Together)   Shifted Sims #20  For example in  Shifted Sims #20 (YouTuber Career: Impossible Burger Connoisseur) , different combinations of such overlays are used for the narrative. From the title and image proportion, we can tell that the girl with burger is the main focus of the painting. Yet ironically, there is not one intact girl, but instead multiple ghost images of a supposingly common character.  We can see her b...