Kristin McWharter

As we adapt to the evolving demands of our politics and environment, we are often asked to prepare for a 'New Reality'. How are 'New Realities' imagined and formed? How can the act of imagining become a tool of creation?, This course will technically and conceptually explore what it means to create and simulate ?new realities? within game engines. As XR (extended reality) technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality devices have become untethered, video game entertainment has become as ubiquitous as film, and user familiarity with the rhetoric of virtual worlds has become more common, this course will expose students to the many modalities in which game engines can be used to produce artwork.

Exploring histories of artists using digital media and simulation to produce interactive and highly immersive experiences, this course offers students technical guidance in creating artistic output from game engine tools, while learning from artist practices of that range from games, animation, simulation, to machinima (cinematic film captured from game engine worlds). With an emphasis on how interactive 3D worlds interact with our increasingly online and virtual routines, students will build projects that explore themes of participation, movement, behavior and world building to investigate our perceptions of ?reality?. The collected group of individuals in this class will act as an experimental lab of participants, collectively and individually pushing the boundaries between the virtual and the physical. Primarily working with the software Unity, this course will include technical demos, readings, and investigations into the histories of immersive media, machinima, and play as an artistic medium. Previous experience working with Unity recommended but not required.

Course work will vary but typically includes weekly reading responses, a mid term project, a final project as well as in class demos and workshops. Students may work collaboratively on these projects if they choose.

This course approaches the tools provided by game engines as an experimental sound studio capable of creating new kinds of digital audio works for un-fixed media. Procedural audio tools can lead to endlessly evolving sound compositions and generative music; interactivity can empower navigability through sonic worlds, virtual sound installations, or the creation of new instruments; physics simulations can allow for real, hyperreal, and unreal audio environments for listeners, viewers, and gamers. Starting from the first day with the download of a game engine and a digital audio workstation and ending on the last with the critique of a sound-focused work, this class will provide a thorough introduction to authoring sound-focused art experiences using game engines.
Some of the scholars/artists we will study in this course include Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller¿s audio walks, Peter Gena, Poppy Crum, Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers among others. Of particular interest are works that explore the use of real time, interactive, and emergent systems that critically address the ways that sound, action, and presence shape the experience of listening bodies.
Screening may include virtual reality works such as Notes on Blindness by Colinart, La Burthe, and Middleton and Spinney or spatial audio experiences such as Scott Reitheman¿s Boom App.
Through weekly assignments and class studio time, we will focus first on building technical skills and developing some historical context related to game engine development, digital audio production, spatial hearing and spatial audio approaches, and real time motion tracking and interaction. Individual projects for formal class critiques will be proposed by students and may take the form of music composition, virtual sound installation, video game or VR sound design, new sonics forms, etc.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.