{"id":1948,"date":"2011-04-18T20:32:35","date_gmt":"2011-04-19T02:32:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/handyvandal.com\/?p=1948"},"modified":"2011-04-18T20:32:48","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T02:32:48","slug":"perfection-versus-mortality-in-games-and-simulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/2011\/04\/perfection-versus-mortality-in-games-and-simulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfection versus Mortality in Games and Simulation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The New Cultural Form: Perfection versus Mortality in Games and Simulation at Rensselaer<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/chang-ben_becoming.jpg\" alt=\"Becoming (2007), Silvia Ruzanka+Ben Chang\" title=\"Becoming (2007), Silvia Ruzanka+Ben Chang\" width=\"260\" height=\"446\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1950\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Willy Nilly\u2019s Surf Shack offers a cure for the idealized virtual world of Second Life. The online shop, a project of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Associate Professor of Arts Ben Chang and collaborators, endows otherwise flawless avatars with real-world foils like clumsiness. A project allowing avatars to visibly age over time is in the works.<\/p>\n<p>The shop is one of several projects Chang uses to explore humanity in technology. Chang, an electronic artist and recently appointed co-director of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer, sees the dialogue between perfection and mortality as an important influence in the growing world of games and simulation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There\u2019s this transcendence that technology promises us. At its extreme is the notion of immortality that \u2014 with artificial intelligence, robotics, and virtual reality \u2014 you could download your consciousness and take yourself out of the limitations of the physical body,&#8221; said Chang. &#8220;But at the same time, that\u2019s what makes us human: our frailty and our mortality.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/news.rpi.edu\/update.do?artcenterkey=2855\">Link<\/a> @ Rensselaer\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New Cultural Form: Perfection versus Mortality in Games and Simulation at Rensselaer Willy Nilly\u2019s Surf Shack offers a cure for the idealized virtual world of Second Life. The online shop, a project of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Associate Professor of Arts Ben Chang and collaborators, endows otherwise flawless avatars with real-world foils like clumsiness. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,41,99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-education","category-virtual-humans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1948"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1975,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1948\/revisions\/1975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}