Game Art: Brent Watanabe's "San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam" (2016)
There's little doubt that Watanabe's installation is one of the most ridiculously brilliant Game Art projects of 2016.
I find the San Andreas Streaming Deer Cam way more exciting than
Cory Arcangel's self-playing bowling installations. Watanabe describes his work as follows:Modification of GTA V that creates and follows a deer wandering through the fictional state of San Andreas. The deer character is autonomous and will wander and respond to it's surroundings, interacting with the existing GTA V artificial intelligence. The piece is presented as a live stream on sanandreasanimalcams.com
Watanabe released the first work-in-progress video a few months ago:
Earlier iterations featured different animals, e.g. a wolf:
As you may remember, Watanabe made for(){}; in 2013, a series of projection mapped video game on canvas. The video below shows a triptych of playable acrylic paintings, controlled by the viewer using a NES controller. The project was developed with Cable Griffith.
Brent Watanabe received his BFA in 1995 from the University of Washington with a concentration in Painting. He works primarily in video, animation, and computer controlled installations, often incorporating found home videotapes, high school yearbooks, cultural detritus, pencil drawings, and games. He now lives and works in Washington State.
LINK:
Brent Watanabe