Game Art: Chris Kerich's Digital Kinetic Sculptures (2017)
Kerich's DKS is one of my favorite projects of the year. It's a cross between Arman and Ant Farm, in a digital space. Phenomenal:
"This project, inspired by the YouTube series Car Boys, involved the creation and destruction of kinetic sculptures in the driving game BeamNG.drive(with a few modifications). BeamNG is built to be a vehicle simulator and racing game, allowing its users to customize cars and race and crash them with realistic soft body physics. It also includes an editor, to allow players to create their own levels and scenarios to race in. To create this project, I abused the capabilities of the editor to create car-sculptures that often burst into flame immediately or caused the physics engine to severely glitch as soon as the simulation was started. By exploring conditions of the game that generally be considered unlikely for an average user (cars dropped from a great height with 100x gravity, cars existing inside of one another) a space of strange freedom is opened up inside of what is otherwise a relatively focused driving simulator. These zones of alternative creative production are extremely important in helping to explore and understand systems." (Chris Kerich)Chris Kerich is a programmer, artist, and "human being interested in systems, breaking systems, constrained art, information, critical science studies, games, media and studies". Kerich received his Master of Science at MIT in Comparative Media Studies and he is currently based in Los Angeles, California where he is pursuing a PhD at UCSC.
LINK:
Chris Kerich (All images and videos courtesy of the Artist)