kyle hood
interactive artist

Discopia is an installation and video game made by myself and Nathaniel Kling of Sharkarm Studios. The first part of the project is a video game that we collaborated on. You play a creature of an invasive species in a new land. The object of the game is to use your senses to find food. Taking too mcuh, however, will dry up the source and anger the native species. This game is antithesis of modern gaming, as evolution and progress equates to greed and habitat destruction. To win the game, the player must never stop playing. The only way to win is to constantly go from source to source, only eating just enough to maintain balance.

The second part of Discopia is the setting of the game itself. The game screen is surrounded by scultures that resemble two trees and a cloud. These sculptures are actually displays that are networked to the game. Almost like a lifebar, the trees animate and change based on the choices the player makes in real-time. The colors and animations on these dispalys turn grey and move more slowly as the player destroys the habitat in-game. They are also sensitive to the player's physical presence through the use of contact microphones placed throughout the installation, pulsing as the user generates ambient noise by playing the game.

The game was created by both myself and Nate. Nate made the art assets for the game, and I built the game using the Unity 3D engine. I also built the tree/cloud sculptures, made the display animations in Processing, and used MaxMSP to network the display animations with the real-time game data.