![]() ![]() It has taken over 25 years to progress from early, glowing, line-based, and motion sickness-inducing VR into a stable, expressive, and engaging commercial platform that is popular today. This artist’s vision sparked reflection as a technologist about the future of an important technology: virtual reality (VR). ” // “Future's made of virtual insanity // Now always seem to, be governed by this love we have // For useless, twisting, our new technology // Oh, now there is no sound // For we all live underground” // -Jamiroquai, 1996 You can download Jamiroquai Game for free on Game Jolt.Originally published in Booz Allen Hamilton's in futures newsletter Short Circuit in September/August 2018 - ĭriving home amid a smoky forest fire haze in Seattle this summer, I heard a classic song from 1996 on the radio. Acid-jazz, one-hit wonder Jamiroquai articulated a dystopian vision of technology and humanity with his famous song, “ Virtual Insanity. It gets pretty tough, so if you’re the kind of person to not give up on these challenges, you’ll probably end up slipping into your own virtual insanity. If he isn’t, a comical collision is had as his entire body ragdolls into a limp, jelly-like version of itself. He must be as untouchable as he is in the video. Your task is to ensure Jay Kay isn’t hit by any of them. All the while, black sofas and chairs emerge out of the walls and glide across the floor. ![]() You play as Jay Kay as he steps without moving on that grey floor. It’s called, quite simply, Jamiroquai Game. It is this that you must attempt to replicate in the videogame tribute to the music video. ![]() He’s beyond mere dancing skill, his body always escaping being crushed or moving in inhuman ways as if he were assisted by cybernetic enhancements. It all gives the impression that Jay Kay has a mechanical prowess. The way that Jay Kay tip-toes down a closing aisle between wall and sofa how he steps at the same pace as the set so it appears that he’s moving nowhere and how he rises from sitting to standing while narrowly avoiding a collision with the wall. What makes the “Virtual Insanity” music video impressive even today is its choreography, and not its practical effects, although they are all part of it. But what would be lost in such a case would be the performance in front of the camera. It would no doubt be solved easily these days with modern computer technology. The method itself is very practical then. The camera was attached to one of the walls so that when the set was moved around it would appear that only the objects inside the set, and that were separate from it, were moving-that included Jay Kay and the black sofas. As revealed in an interview with the video’s director Jonathan Glazer, the whole set was a self-contained unit on wheels that was built on a floor with no detail. If it were, that would prove rather ironic considering that the song is about the potential harmful effects of our obsession with technology (and that’s back in 1996!). And it’s not one of Jay Kay’s admittedly skillful dance moves no one can do the impossible. Here, though, Jay Kay isn’t moving his feet at all, yet he moves across the floor. It’s as if he’s found a way to outdo Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, which is itself a sort of illusion performed by gliding the feet in a certain way so that it appears as a backwards walking motion-in practice, it is. This is the trick that had my school friends and I so fascinated. Sometimes he moves while stood completely still. Jay Kay, the band’s singer, seems to glide across the grey floor of the set as he sings and dances. If you’re not familiar with the 1996 pop-soul record or its video, you should remedy that right now. ![]()
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