GAME ART: MIRIAM ROSS AND HELEN PERKINS'S ASSASSIN'S CREED ULYSSES (2020)
A fascinating project by Victoria University of Wellington’s Senior Lecturer Miriam Ross and Helen Perkins (both from the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studie), AC Ulysses is an interactive machinima created with Ubisoft’s Story Creator mode for Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey meant as a remake of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Yes, indeed! The above video is a playthrough of AC Ulysses. A brilliant remediation, AC Ulysses shows the potential for interactive machinima and narrative design. Ubisoft's Story Creator Mode was released in June 2019, and six months later, 9,000 mini-story game plays have already been published. While most of the stories are connected to the game's universe and historical context, Ross and Perkins' work truly illustrate the strength of machinima by mixing different texts, aesthetics, and modes of cosnumption. They are released a series of Bloomsday quests.
Dr Miriam Ross is Senior Lecturer in the Film Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. She works with new technologies to combine practice-based methods and traditional academic analysis. Her publications include South American Cinematic Culture: Policy, Production, Distribution and Exhibition (2010) and 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences (2015) as well as journal articles on film industries, new cinema technologies, stereoscopic media and film festivals. Her short films have been screened internationally and her video essays have been published in online journals. She is also co-founder and administrator of stereoscopicmedia.org.
Helen Perkins is a research assistant in the School of English, Film, Theatre, Media Studies, and Art History. She is completing her final year of study towards her conjoint degrees majoring in Film (BA) and Media Design (BDI).
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