Abstract

The project explores the storytelling potential of Unity for artists and examines the means of integrating Unity’s workflow with real-time projection-mapping software.

Project description

Fantasynth is a real-time installation that offers a gimps into the worlds where different perceptual traditions are defied, and the borders between ‘fictional real’ and ‘fictional virtual’ are compromised. The project incorporates two means of storytelling – procedurally and using a conventional form of displaying video footage on the screen. Offering an open end to the viewer, the installation tells a short abstract story of an insect named Vincent, dwells on the philosophical ideas of rebirth and repetition and contemplates about escapism and fantasy as alternatives to reality.

Implementation

1st stage: Focus on skill

• Prefabs VS 3D modelling
• Fast forward learning
• Creative coding in Unity

2d stage: Trial-and-Error

• Focus on modelling and coding
• Search for artistic intention

3d stage: Eureka!

• Medium: Unity as procedural engine [looping, rebirth, mental structures]
• Story and aesthetics
• Key features: movement, flow, high frequencies
• Inspiration in philosophy, humanless worlds
• Escapism and fantasy

Lessons learned

Although it is difficult to stay artistic while learning new technical skills, it is doable when you’re backed up with a strong motivation and willingness to complete the project.

Creative coding is a medium of its own unique modality and it has huge artistic power.

The key problem of computational creativity: how to reconcile creative flow with algorithmic solutions; how to find these solutions without knowing the final process.

If you start from yourself, from what is interesting only for you, you may face the problem of how to make your viewer interested.

Learning by doing is not the best goal-oriented strategy. Yet it can speed up the progress.