Hypnogenesis

VIDEO SYNTHESIZER ARCADE GAME

Hypnogenesis is a short, experimental, video feedback space shooter in which arcade gameplay is integrated with the controls of a video synthesizer. You are the Fungal Fighter! Fly through the vortex and slip your tendrils into enemy minds. By exploring the game, players simultaneously experiment with the creation of emergent visuals.

A VARIETY OF EMERGENT VISUALS

All of the visual effects in Hypnogenesis are created with video feedback during gameplay. Player controls are latched to video parameters like brightness, contrast, hue, and xy position, which transform the behavior of the video feedback. Hypnogenesis has four stages offering a different set of relationships between player controls and video feedback.

PSYCHEDELIC SHMUP MEETS VIDEO ART

Before video games, televisions were one-way receivers of broadcast signals, and there wasn’t really a way to interact with the image. In the 1960s and 70s, video artists like Nam June Paik developed video synthesis to experiment with video signals, for example by warping the image with magnets, or by playing with video feedback. We imagine that Hypnogenesis is part of an alternative history of games that followed from this spirit of experimentation. In other words, what if video games were based on video synthesizers?

Created in openFrameworks using Andrei Jay's open source Video Waaaves software.