VIDEO GAME VESPERS
2022 • Sprague Music Hall at Yale
Interaction Design / Experience Design
Video Game Vespers is a live violin concert that uses projection mapping and motion capture, performed at Sprague Music Hall in December 2022. Vespers visualizes the story of the composition by Aaron Israel Levin, which speaks to the use of the violin as a weapon and the demonized, game-like life of the violinist in modern classical music. As the violinist levels up by playing harder and harder pieces to the utmost perfection, she is thrown into an endless cycle of competing, with the sole end game of winning or losing the concert.
Press Article A recital reimagined: Yale violinist merges tradition, technology
Violinst: Ilana Zaks
Composer: Aaron Israel Levin
Technical Art & Dev: Jack Wesson
INTERACTION DESIGN
The video game is projected onto the back of the concert hall as the violinist, Ilana Zaks, performs. The violinist is motion tracked in real time, controlling the movement and positioning of the Vesper FPS soldier who traverses through a futuristic world equipped with his weaponized violin. The game environment calculates every note Zaks plays against a perfect performance of the piece. Every time she is off by a mere millisecond, the environment glitches and reacts with game noises and effects. However, within moments of the performance starting, Zaks is already confronted with glaring signs of defeat as the concert is deemed game over.
