In this version of Tuner, we find ourselves continuing the voyage of capturing endangered fish specimens from vast tunnel networks. Trapped on a remote planet, we’re set in the biomechanical boat’s cockpit, operated telepathically via (side stage appearance) of the ProDancer. 

The ProDancer has found himself in a state of operating a lifeboat on an alien planet. It is your task to control the boat through underground passages providing an act of freedom for nature. The waters are littered with junk-like mollusc reincarnations of past Earth transmissions, re-played to us as we dismantle them in the processors (bins). 

The duties performed here are like an environmental ritual process, overseen by an unknown entity, judging the freeing of ProDancer’s exile on Earth. 

During the residency, I managed to develop more of a relationship between the ProDancer and the boat technically. Allowing him to navigate the landscape in order to follow the boat. This gives way to future interactions between the two (Boat & ProDancer) in this story.

Environmental sounds are scattered around the world, and are triggered through interactions and events. The background ambience is emitted from a new radio source, given to the Prodancer to carry. It acts as a companion, and when in accessible positions we can interact with the tuner dial for different broadcasts in relation to the zones we are in (accessible FM frequencies).

With this version of Tuner’s production, I managed to lift the old MIDI dependant control input interface and implemented the first stages of a mouse controllable GUI interface. This is seen only once in use as it is currently required to give the ‘fish basket’ to the rockets (fish lifeboat pods).

Designing the GUI interface has vast importance for how it can be translated into world logic to symbolism, and acts as a mediator for making sense of the world and tasks around us. In game, it is an optional graphic that can be simply toggled via right-clicking. When in frame it allows basic boat movement via mouse and numerous visual feedbacks such as collected fish quantities, compass, torch and distances etc.

The aim also during the residency was to prepare the project for public consumption as a downloaded playable zip. This prospect is now in sight, and during development the project has undergone many performance tweaks, i.e. scalable landscape loading and purified code logic. Although this package did not make it for the residency exhibition the ability for public consumption version 1 is now clear.

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