Bret Victor gave a guest lecture today to a class I’m co-teaching with Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab. As always, what Bret had to say was inspirational and highly thought provoking.<\/p>\n
For me one of the highlights of the class was a spirited discussion between Bret and Xiao Xiao — one of Hiroshi’s Ph.D. students, and also a brilliant musician.<\/p>\n
Bret had used The SIMS as an example of a simulation world that is deliberately stylized. As Will Wright has explained, the unreality in the look and behavior of the characters in this game is a key part of its design. This feeling of unreality creates a sense of mystery, which allows players to project their own stories and emotions onto the characters.<\/p>\n
Xiao then pointed out that in fact character behavior in The SIMS goes beyond merely mysterious — SIMS characters often do things that no real human would ever do. In fact, their behavior can be at times downright alien. She posited that this feeling of the SIMS characters being “impossible” people helps to remind players that this is an alternate world, thereby increasing the sense of freedom and possibility.<\/p>\n
Which leads to an intriguing question: Is there an “optimal” level of unreality in a virtual world, at which a sense of possibility is maximized? Science fiction plays with this edge all the time. If characters and stories are too weird and incomprehensible, then the reader can become lost. But until this point is reached, the experience of encountering strange beings and unfamiliar ways of thinking can be very mind expanding.<\/p>\n
Which is, after all, one of the reasons we make art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bret Victor gave a guest lecture today to a class I’m co-teaching with Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab. As always, what Bret had to say was inspirational and highly thought provoking. For me one of the highlights of the class was a spirited discussion between Bret and Xiao Xiao — one of Hiroshi’s … Continue reading “Optimal unreality”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14579"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14580,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14579\/revisions\/14580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}