How do creative practices integrate historical developments such as optical illusion and cinematic methods with modern gaming and data technologies to create innovative hybrid media, and how might this fusion inspire new works that contain visual traces of media archaeology?
Introduction
The parallel evolution of cinematic and optical illusions with video game development spans a broad timeline, from early 19th-century motion devices like the zoetrope to mid-20th-century computer experiments such as the 1950s oscilloscope games and military simulations. This convergence becomes more apparent over time, culminating in the late 1990s and early 2000s when real-time rendering, motion capture, and virtual cinematography bridged the two fields, blending storytelling, interactivity, and perception into hybrid digital experiences.
About the project
This project investigates how the intersecting trajectories of cinematic illusion, gaming technologies, and their associated tools and devices have influenced both historical and contemporary forms of hybrid media. It leads to the question: How might new contributions to hybrid media emerge from the fusion of these technologies, and how could they shape future design practices? Rather than viewing these developments as a linear progression from low-tech to high-tech, the project explores alternative trajectories that challenge dominant technological narratives and industry standards. By recontextualizing and integrating legacy technologies with emerging tools, or by valuing the distinct affordances of older media, it seeks to uncover new paradigms for technological development and creative practice. As boundaries between media forms continue to dissolve, the convergence of cinema, gaming, and digital technology has given rise to a proliferation of hybrid works that defy traditional categorization.
This research project aims to explore how these changes have developed over time and how they appear today. Cinematic illusion and gaming technologies have evolved in parallel and sometimes intertwining ways, particularly through the material tools and devices that shaped their development: from early optical toys like the zoetrope to contemporary game engines. These devices form a historical lineage of visual trickery and interaction that underpins today’s immersive and hybrid media works.
Bio
Marieke Verbiesen is a research fellow at KMD, Department of Design. She holds an MFA from Frank Mohr Institute Groningen, Interactive Media Environments.
She creates interactive installations and performances using experimental animation, exhibited and screened at various festivals, museums, cinema ́s, artspaces, galleries and public spaces since 2003.
Her crossdiciplinairy works can be best described as a fused output of various media, often resulting in lifesize installations that combine cinema, sculpture and interactivity.
In the years prior to her PHD, Marieke has given presentations, performances & talks at the Hiroshima Animation Festival (JP) Montreal Museum for Modern Art (CAN) Northwest Filmcentre in Portland (USA) Superdeluxe Tokyo(JP), Transmediale Berlin(DE) BFI Londen (UK) Nikolaj Kunsthal (DK) Kino Kino (NO) & the Museum for Moving Image (USA).