Cloudbox (2021)

[Use W/A/S/D or arrow keys to control]

[Headphones are recommended for the best experience]

[Trigger Warning: Loud noises and explosions] 

Cloudbox is a sound-focused interactive installation experimenting with differences in viewer interpretation and experience. The players navigate through different sound zones with arrow keys, and though they play the same game and see the same scenery the experience itself is entirely contingent on the viewer's interpretation, exposing the ability of sound to create nuance and interactivity. 

The piece puts audiences in between disconcerting dichotomies - the duality of present serenity and past violence; the disorientation from both being in and out of control; the discombobulation between sight and sound; the philosophical demarcation between video games and art. While breaking the traditional hierarchy in sensory experiences, the work continues the poignant social commentary of Susan Sontag - that art serves both as a source of catharsis or spiritual enlightenment, and as a mouthpiece of war propaganda or military recruitment. 

Credits: 

Sound/Concept - Kyrin Chen 

Visual/Concept - Vi Trinh 

Programming - Ning Sun 

About Steambao Collective: 

As a collective, Steambao seeks to subvert the dogma in interactive art through the medium of video games. Playing on the artworld’s expectations of the very potential of video-game mechanics and on the regular game-players expectations of interactive controls, the collective explores themes of agency and human connections. In their current works, they challenge audiences with the discombobulation between vision and sound and the duality between violence and voyeuristic joys in a naïve and deceptively soothing manner.