Meta Island Beta

RESEARCH BACKGROUND
Commissioned by Lucy Turnbull, Abundant explored the idea of architectural abundance and richness in Australia and the capacity of the human imagination. Meta Island Beta presents a hybrid physical/digital installation connecting an abstracted landscape form in real time to a videogame environment. The landscape sculpture has concealed sensing apparatus which establishes the light levels of the gallery space and adjusts the imagery as a real-time response.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION
Greg More has researched the digital and synthetic environments of videogames where islands have no geology, located in the flatness of an infinite ocean, where meta-concepts of game-play and virtual inhabitation inform the island silhouette and land form. In this context an island is a space prior to identity, as in Wu Cheng'en's 1590's tale, Journey to the West. Despite its nominal representation of island geography, Meta Island Beta is constantly reconfiguring and reforming itself in response to the light levels, presenting a real-time reconfiguration of a virtual landform sitting on the horizon of an ocean.

RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE
The Meta Island Beta project was originally developed for Strangely Familiar [working title], the third in a series of exhibitions by artists and designers from RMIT University and the University of South Australia. These exhibitions provide an opportunity to profile experimental, interactive and evolving design process research. Meta Island Beta was subsequently selected for the Venice Architecture Biennale.