Intersections - Nguyen Dang Binh

0
Troy Innocent
Scenes from Ludea
Single-channel video installation
ARTIST STATEMENT
Cultures, languages, and ways of being may be invented within
game worlds. Ludea is a world in which three tribes subscribing to
conflicting ideologies define their territories along lines of communication.
Each tribe gathers resources and tags in colour-neo-materialist
orange, post-symbolic green and post-human blue. Victory goes
to the clan that achieves the widest domain.
The ludeans come from a generation that has grown up with
games, abstract machines, and digital processes. It has become
second nature for them to make abstractions of reality in terms of
models, systems, processes, and flows. The world of Ludea explores
the post-human condition and unstable nature of contemporary
existence via three contrasting experiences of place. This occurs
through signs and symbols that are mapped onto real-world locations
to create meaningful connections and experiences across three
different public spaces: virtual, networked and physical.
ludeans subscribe to one of three different ideologies: neo-materialism,
the post-symbolic, and the post-human. Each ideology
represents a position of distrust with a particular mode of communication
and has developed an alternative language to avoid using this
particular mode. By way of example, the post-linguistic has come to
distrust written and spoken words, and they have embraced communication
that consists solely of gestures and synaesthetic icons.
Electronic Art and Animation Catalog Art Gallery Artworks
CONTACT
Troy Innocent
Monash University
900 Dandenong Road
Caulfield East 3145 Australia
+613 9903 2881
Troy.Innocent@artdes.monash.edu.au
www.iconica.org/ludea/
The work also draws on theories of “possible worlds” generated
by the combination of artificial intelligence (AI), digital games, and
the idea of “world building” through invented language and culture.
On a more metaphorical level, the work creates interactive spaces
and systems that manifest experiences of a world characterised by
uncertainty, multiplicity, complexity, and connectivity. Thus, it makes
us aware of the changing nature of reality.
TECHNICAl STATEMENT
Scenes from Ludea depicts a series of locations from the city of
Melbourne that have been modified by various digital interventions.
Each location was shot on digital video and subsequently manipulated
by three main digital processes:
1. Several computer graphic icons were placed at key points in
streets and laneways. In many cases, the locations were recreated
within 3D computer graphics software to generate matching
shadows and other details.
2. Three animated computer graphic figures were placed in
doorways, shifted through the various spaces, and composited
onto streets.
3. Custom software for generation of glyphs from possible iconographic
languages was developed. This generative system
draws, breeds, and animates glyphs from the three cultures
represented in the work. Clouds of these glyphs were generated
and animated for particular scenes in the piece.