Bullet Hell (2011-) is a side-scrolling platform game in which the user controls the movement of a bullet. As with games like Canabalt and Robot Unicorn Attack, the object of the game is to prolong gameplay by avoiding collisions with the surrounding environment, and as gameplay progresses the game stage moves faster. The game explores the artistic potential of this popular game genre by removing its familiar feedback mechanisms (i.e. score, lives, music, interface), and foregrounding its eternal recurrence and limited control-set within a hellish context.
Bullet Hell was developed with Anton Hand, and is currently being playtested before its Spring 2012 release.
#hashTag (2011-) is a puzzle platformer and experimental data visualization, inspired by the classic arcade game Q*bert and the Occupy Movement, in which the user advances through levels by tagging spaces while avoiding enemy peppers and dodo birds. Game levels are generated by Twitter data from a specific date and place of occupation.
#hashTag was prototyped with Luke Noonan as part of the #OccupyData Hackathon, from 9-11 December 2011.
Minecraft Memorials (2011-) is a virtual artistic intervention, in which the members of RUST LTD. install memorials to real-life coal mining accidents on multiplayer Minecraft servers. We have installed memorials to the Sago Coal Mine Disaster on the Toy Studio server, and on the CTCS 505 server at the University of Southern California. Future installations are currently in development.
Hourglass (2011-) is an experimental survival adventure game that explores indentured servitude and representations of labor. RUST LTD. is currently developing the game for the Unity 3D platform, and plans to release the game before the end of 2013.
AFEELD (2011) is a collection of playable intermedia and concrete art compositions that exist in the space between poetry and computer games. It contains four chapbooks (Alphabet Man, Feeldwork, Count as One, and This is Visual Poetry), two games (M!ndsweeper and Asterisk), and a wide variety of user-generated content. The entire collection is available for free online.
Robot Butler (2011) is an experimental combination of time management and classic tower defense mechanics. Players find themselves in the midst of a revolution led by obsolete domestic robots, and must defend their owners’ homes from relentless robotic revolutionaries while continuing to complete household chores. Robot Butler was created by RUST LTD. for Domestronics, the world’s leading provider of domestic maintenintelligence, and is free to play on the Kongregate website.
M!ndsweeper (2010) is a re-imagining of the classic game Minesweeper as a neo-dadaist concrete poem. The informational numbers have been replaced with groups of consonants, and those consonants change after each round of play. To play the game is to engage in a kind of purposeful forgetting in the tense space between competing acts of signification. M!ndsweeper was published in Issue 27 of Oxford Magazine, was installed as part of the Oct. 2010 Adjunct+1 show at Tulane University’s Carroll Gallery, and appears in my collection, AFEELD.
Asterisk (2010) is a concrete game that remixes the “top-down shooter” genre of video games. The user controls an asterisk that zooms around atop a canvas, dodging and shooting various colored opponents. Avatar and enemies alike leave trails marking their paths, and these trails accumulate as play progresses. When the asterisk-avatar shoots an opponent, the opponent bursts with a splat of color. Asterisk is both a game and an instrument for playful painting.
This is Visual Poetry (2010) contains sixteen visual poems created and controlled through computer game glitches. I used an NES emulator as an instrument, improvised and composed in real time, and recorded the output of my play. This is Visual Poetry was published by Dan Waber in July 2010, as the 51st chapbook in his This is Visual Poetry series, and also appears as a chapter in my full-length collection, AFEELD.
Andy June (2010-) is a heteronym under which I produce soundwork, ytmnd sites, and amateurish conceptual art. The name began with a spoof of Miranda July, and accidentally became an ongoing project. Andy now edits the sound journal Cassette and has published work in Cricket Online Review, As Long as it Takes, and Textsound. He may be working on an album, but I can neither confirm nor deny this.
You can find Andy through email and on Facebook and Twitter.
Alphabet Man (2010) is a narrative sequence of twelve concrete poems. Each poem was composed using every letter of the alphabet once and only once. Letters were not altered in any way during composition. Alphabet Man was published as a chapbook by Slack Buddha Press in April 2010, and appears as a chapter in my collection, AFEELD.
Count As One (2009) is a chapbook of fifteen interactive poems inspired by the work of Alain Badiou and the tradition of modernist concrete poetry. Users can click inside each poem to reveal and author meaning, and can print, save, and publish their own unique output. The chapbook appears in the Fall 2009 issue of New River: a Journal of Digital Writing and Art, and as a chapter in my full-length collection, AFEELD.
