Transitory Objects, Transformers 84/04 Interactive Installation, Oeiras Festival ,
Co-workers & Funding
Transitory Objects * Transformers Installation 84/04 * Oeiras 2004
“I’m the raw material for a simulation: it’s carving itself into my flesh and my emotions. I’m being played. You don’t play a simulation. It plays you.” Jill Walker, “how I was played by online Caroline”, First Person, New media as story, performance and game, 2004.
Transitional objects are objects which transform themselves constantly in multiple representations and that have the capacity of mutation. According to D. W. Winnicott, who developed this concept, there is a clear game process between the child and the mother, in which the adoption of assorted roles simultaneously, becomes possible. It is through these transitional objects – puppets, toys, narrative fictions – that the children build their personality and their physical reality. These representations are used to make explicit the processual and configurative simulation character, Transformers plasticity.
Speaking about the plasticity of the newly born, the plasticity of a child’s behaviour. The plasticity also characterizes the flexibility, the malleability (the brain’s plasticity) and the capacity of an organism to evolve and to adapt itself (Malabou, 1996). The simulation plasticity is evident in an exemplary process in which a source system is used in the creation of a model (representation) that, afterwards, gives place to the simulator (software). The analogical simulation usually has, as a reference, a model based on the reality (boat, plain). The digital simulation is not, in most of the cases, connected with the reality, and works from the standpoint of a system’s simulation. The analogical simulation, while algorithmic simulation, models the other source system: boat, plain, toy (Frasca, 2001). The digital simulation, being experiential, imitates the other system process, it’s transformation (Myers, 2003).
In this context, the Transformers were adapted as source systems, while representation or model, illustrations of two images of those robots/cars/plains. The simulator is the result of this metamorphosis between two different representations of each toy. In freestyle, we play with an aleatory animation of these metamorphoses. In a different way of representing, which may have multiple meanings (interpretations) just for one signified (representation), the simulation while entertainment device, is a semiotic construction machine of significance. A dynamic configuration space, which changes with the user/player input.
“I’m the raw material for a simulation: it’s carving itself into my flesh and my emotions. I’m being played. You don’t play a simulation. It plays you.” Jill Walker, “how I was played by online Caroline”, First Person, New media as story, performance and game, 2004.
Transitional objects are objects which transform themselves constantly in multiple representations and that have the capacity of mutation. According to D. W. Winnicott, who developed this concept, there is a clear game process between the child and the mother, in which the adoption of assorted roles simultaneously, becomes possible. It is through these transitional objects – puppets, toys, narrative fictions – that the children build their personality and their physical reality. These representations are used to make explicit the processual and configurative simulation character, Transformers plasticity.
Speaking about the plasticity of the newly born, the plasticity of a child’s behaviour. The plasticity also characterizes the flexibility, the malleability (the brain’s plasticity) and the capacity of an organism to evolve and to adapt itself (Malabou, 1996). The simulation plasticity is evident in an exemplary process in which a source system is used in the creation of a model (representation) that, afterwards, gives place to the simulator (software). The analogical simulation usually has, as a reference, a model based on the reality (boat, plain). The digital simulation is not, in most of the cases, connected with the reality, and works from the standpoint of a system’s simulation. The analogical simulation, while algorithmic simulation, models the other source system: boat, plain, toy (Frasca, 2001). The digital simulation, being experiential, imitates the other system process, it’s transformation (Myers, 2003).
In this context, the Transformers were adapted as source systems, while representation or model, illustrations of two images of those robots/cars/plains. The simulator is the result of this metamorphosis between two different representations of each toy. In freestyle, we play with an aleatory animation of these metamorphoses. In a different way of representing, which may have multiple meanings (interpretations) just for one signified (representation), the simulation while entertainment device, is a semiotic construction machine of significance. A dynamic configuration space, which changes with the user/player input.
The concept was created by me and it was part of my Doctoral thesis research. I did all the imagery. Nuno N. Correia did the programming and sound. I was invited for this commission by Oeiras municipality.