October 12, 2007

99 Rooms is a collaborative effort among four artists of different types - painter Kim Köster, Richard Schumann and Stephan Shulz on photography and animation, and sound designer Johannes Buenemann - that is more interactive artwork than game. Köoster painted murals on the walls of abandoned buildings in East Berlin's industrial sector. The murals were then photographed, animated, and given soundtracks. In each room, you find what allows you to advance to the next scene. It can be a simple click anywhere on the screen, pulling levers or throwing switches, or a number of other triggers. If you get impatient, the space bar will advance you to the next room. The presentation is morbidly beautiful.

NFH Propaganda works in a similar vein, taking photos of abandoned buildings and factories, compositing them into a new scene, and then adding animation and sound effects. It is much more gory than 99 Rooms, and tends toward scenes of the dead, torture, and murder. Many scenes are very NSFW. The third rather morbid and spooky interactive artwork is The Hospital. Photographs of an abandoned hospital were composited to make unique rooms with animation and sound. As you explore, small hidden camera icons in many scenes will show you the original photos that were composited to create the new image.

  • I can't make up my mind whether I'm glad not to have seen this right before bed or not. Beautiful...
  • Cheers to Christophine for another fine Halloween post! Jeers to my inadequate work computer.
  • Christophine, of late you're an FPP stud. Consider yourself commended.
  • I'm scared to look. I'm such a sucker for puzzle sites.
  • I really enjoyed 99 rooms. It was as though the interactive function was not so much a puzzle as a way to draw you into the art. It crashed firefox at room 93, though. I'll have to go through again to finish, but I won't mind. Awesome!
  • This was fun! Pace yourself, Christophine. You're going to spoil us!