ENGINE ROOM

The Engine Room is a specialised seminar for students interested in using Unreal Engine 5 for their projects, as well as for anyone using 3D software at an intermediate or advanced level. With the rise of real-time computer graphics and game-related tools, this seminar offers a weekly exchange for discussing ongoing developments in the field, as well as how shifts in commercial pipelines influence not only media art practices and aesthetics but also the demand for resource extraction and the resulting harm to the real-world environment caused by the creation and experience of virtual environments. The sessions consist of small workshops and presentations on advanced and intermediate techniques. You will explore playing, experimenting, implementing, building, landscaping, soundscaping, simulating, animating, node-based programming, and developing game engine-based artworks. Along with tutorials and discussions about technical approaches and methods, there will be opportunities to discuss the economic, social, and cultural aspects of gaming and the possibilities of imagining worlds.

A basic knowledge of the fundamentals of 3D is recommended. This seminar is ideal for students who have completed GLS 3D I and II. For questions about the introduction to specific computer graphics software, please visit the CG Lab and Engine Room wikis (https://exmediawiki.khm.de/index.php/) for beginner tutorials and documentation.

Recommended literature, games, texts, interactive tools:

Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene, Tsing et al., 2021 

(Interactive atlas: https://feralatlas.supdigital.org/) 

The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, Le Guin et al., 2019

Futures of Games and Game Studies, Eludamos, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2023 

(https://eludamos.org/index.php/eludamos/issue/view/771/105)   

Everything to Play For: How Videogames Are Changing the World, Marijam Did, 2024

The Beginner’s Guide, Davey Wreden, 2015

The Persistence of Code in Game Engine Culture, Eric Freedman, 2020