John Bruneau
Artist, Educator, Curator, Coder.Download Resume | Full CV
Contact: john [at] artfail [dot] com
Teaching: Game Design at NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Creating: Clinical VR games at Invincikids and Immersive Media at Heart Street
Playing: Catan, Killer Queen, Secret of Mana, SimCity
Reading: Saga
Hacking: Quest 2, Wiimotes, AR Foundation
Recent Work
Out For Delivery, 2020 [Heart Street]
Out For Delivery is a 42 minute playable documentary shot with a 360-degree camera. The slice-of-life experience follows a food delivery courier in Beijing on January 23, 2020, the day before Lunar New Year, and the day Wuhan shut down due to COVID-19.
News
Exhibitions
Awards
Press
Kinfolk, 2021 [Pariah Interactive]
Kinfolk by Movers & Shakers, is an augmented reality archive of Black and Brown stories that are often overlooked by our country's monuments, schools, and history books. Using Kinfolk, a player can place AR monuments in realspace and unlock their biographies and other learning resources. I worked as a senior developer on the project as part of Pariah Interactive.
Exhibitions
Awards
Press
Spaceburgers 2, 2021 [Invincikids, Mighty Immersion]
Spaceburgers 2 is a physical therapy and procedural support game developed for Invincikids and Mighty Immersion. It is a fast-paced virtual reality game that combines the classic arcade racing and rail shooter genres. It uses a mobile VR headset and pedal bike alt-control interface. The faster the player pedals, the faster they shoot. Spaceburgers 2 was designed to motivate patients with limited motion or pain in their lower extremities to keep up with their movement exercises while they recover. This is part of a series of games designed along with doctors and researchers to create fun experiences that assist in physical therapy and pain rehab.
The Banjo Toss, 2020
The Banjo Toss: Banjo Throwing Competition replicates in digital format the signature absurd contest of the Brooklyn Folk Festival, held annually on the banks of the Gowanus Canal, a federally designated superfund site. Players get 10 chances to rack up points by hurling the special throwing banjo as far as they can into the canal.
Press
DK Bathtime, 2020 [with Karl Hohn + Flan]
DK Bathtime is a bathing simulator in which players must clean as much of DK as they possibly can. The more bubbles you scrub away, the more points you get. The scrub brush is controlled by a Wiimote attached to a real life brush peripheral. This game was inspired by Shigeru Miyamoto and the epiphany he had to create the original Donkey Kong game while taking a bath.
Exhibitions
Press
Red White & Blue, 2018
Red White & Blue is a game about bipartisan community building. It plays like a twin-stick action puzzle game with Atari-era aesthetics. The gameplay hints at a political narrative with an intentionally abstract design.
After over a year of development and some back and forth with the platform owners, the mobile version of Red White and Blue has been released on both iOS and Android.
Exhibitions
Future Flower, 2017 [Arbitrary Industries]
Future Flower is an ikebana inspired augmented reality game developed with Stefanie Franciotti. Players use their smartphones or iPads to create virtual flower arrangements in real space. Flowers can be moved, rotated, and scaled in multiple dimensions and on multiple axes using a small number of touch gestures. Players have the ability to find virtual flowers in the real world à la Pokémon Go but can also leave flowers and arrangements for other players to find and send arrangements to each other directly over email or text messaging. Future Flower is still an unreleased beta.
Exhibitions
Exhibition Highlights
Demand Player Sovereignty, 2011 [The Third Faction]
Demand Player Sovereignty [or DPS] is a movement of civil disobedience led by the Third Faction. Our goal is to gain greater autonomy for the players of the massively multiplayer online game "World of Warcraft." We believe it is necessary, not only to support the diverse and creative play styles that are created by the players, but also to earn the players a voice to change the rules of the game itself. The Third Faction Collective leads its members and volunteers in active engagement within the game environment as well as outside it.
Exhibitions
Bibliography & Press
/hug, 2009 [The Third Faction]
/hug [or slashhug] is a Third Faction project which seeks to establish a non governmental aid organization in World of Warcraft. This exhibit is a mixed reality installation that demonstrates the work of /hug and is inspired in part by the Red Cross. This installation encourages viewer interaction in carrying out Non Governmental Organization of Azeroth missions via hands-on participation.
Exhibitions
Bibliography & Press
Tool Shed Days, 2008 [Ars Virtua + Red 76]
Tool Shed Days, a collection of projects for the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge, was a Cadre/Montalvo artist research residency and a FUSE: collaboration with Red76 and Ars Virtua.
Tool Shed Days served as an exploration into the possibilities of Second Life as a platform for the investigation of radical social histories. I worked to develop tools using Second Life and other technologies that could be used to perform and stage various acts of resistance, specifically, Befriend a Recruiter, the Defense Co-op, and our in-world printshop and paper Discontent.
Exhibitions
Bibliography & Press
Looks Very Tidy, 2007 [Ars Virtua]
Looks Very Tidy is composed of two virtual vacuum cleaners, created in the 3D virtual world of Second Life, and rendered into real space with a 3D printer. Accompanying the sculptures, is a short film of the Joe Languish (John Bruneau) and Rubaiyat Shatner (James Morgan) vacuuming the Ars Virtua gallery.
Vacuuming is a fundamentally mundane process that relies on the nature of terrestrial reality (dirt & dust). When transposed into a game world it takes on an absurd quality and the drudgery becomes purely performative. Furthermore since the vacuum cleaner is functionally useless it becomes an object of pure fetish or "sculpture."
Exhibitions
Bibliography & Press
Oath, 2018 [with Yuxin Gao]
Oath is an alt-ware tabletop game for 2 to 4 players designed specifically to run on Blinks. Payers must rapidly tap Blinks whenever their color appears and reconfigure the board to surround the opposing players' Blinks. Oath was inspired by ancient politics and war. It reflects the nurturing nature of camaraderie and family but also the infectious nature of nationalism.
Awards
Exhibitions
127 BPM, 2018 [with Yuxin Gao]
127 BPM is a 2-player racing game that recycles DDR pads and Super Mario Bros sprites. Players are asked to keep their walking speed at or above 127 beats per minute in order to avoid upsetting the pedestrians on the crowded New York sidewalk. 127 BPM was commissioned by the Graffiti Games initiative at Playcrafting.
Exhibitions
Bibliography & Press
Litewall Games, 2013, 2014 [Litewall Group]
The Litewall project is a 7 foot tall, 18 foot long, 8x16 pixel grid made by Steve Durie and the Litewall Group. I created two games for the project. Litewall_Pong is an adaptation of the Atari classic. In this vesion, the speed of the ball increases with every successful volley and scoring is tracked by an increase in background color values (orange vs blue). River_Snake is a Snake / River Rescue hybrid. In this auto-scroller, the player must avoid obstacles and eat red apples to grow longer. Both Lightwall games are controlled through Wii Nunchuck movement and run on the Arduino.
Awards
Exhibitions
MFA Prep Course, 2011 [with Marek Kapolka]
MFA Prep Course is an artist simulator and training application for those seriously considering advanced degrees in the field of visual arts. The player uses a dual-analogue gamepad to control both hands at once, allowing them to smoke multiple cigarettes and consume large amounts of coffee.
Awards
Exhibitions
Bibliography & Press
Karaoke Ice, 2006 [with Nancy Nowacek, Katie Salen, Marina Zurkow, et al]
Karaoke Ice is a mobile karaoke booth ice cream truck art piece. Originally conceived as a Cadre / Montalvo Residency for ZeroOne / ISEA 2006, it was a collaboration between Nancy Nowacek, Katie Salen, and Marina Zurkow, in collaboration with, myself, Mike Weisert, Kristin O'Friel, Corrie Tse, Thomas Asmuth, Owen Premore, and Sarah Lowe.