u r 1 is a room by Gregor Schneider, made multiple times, striving for authenticity and identical reproduction. v r 1 is a game made in Unity that seeks to recreate the spirit of u r 1 in the context of a game engine. Reproduction is just cut-and-paste, so v r 1 focuses on manipulations and variations of the space that are Unity’s equivalent of carpentry. b r 1 is a game made in Bitsy that seeks to recreate the spirit of v r 1 in another game engine. Bitsy is similar to Unity in that it provides a way to make worlds you walk in, but it’s different in being 2D and vastly more constrained in its possibilities, from palettes to pixels to interactions. b r 1 is thus a reflection on how this process of double translation can take place, thinking about both u r 1 and v r 1 and producing something similar but new, that shows the marks of the original artwork and the original videogame, but also has the creases and lines of Bitsy as well. b r 1 shows you what Bitsy is like, and what Unity is like, and what Gregor Schneider’s u r 1 is like.
u r 1 is a room made by Gregor Schneider that contains (with some variations) a window, a radiator, a bed, a trunk, and a metal tube. u r 1 is an artwork that Schneider has created and recreated multiple times in multiple locations, emblematic of his practice of duplicating spaces with fanatical precision.
v r 1 is a videogame made by Pippin Barr that recreates Schneider’s u r 1 in the Unity game engine. In an effort to evoke Schneider’s passionate carpentry and attention to detail, v r 1 presents the room in a series of different configurations, duplications, and deconstructions. In digital spaces, duplication is trivial, and so variation is used to replace it.
b r 1 is a videogame made by Pippin Barr that recreates v r 1 in the Bitsy game engine. v r 1 is in 3D, in first-person, has sound effects, simulates physics, but Bitsy games are in 2D, in third-person, are silent, are static. b r 1 is a game made to explore what happens when you translate a game from one engine to another, from Unity to Bitsy, while fighting to keep the underlying ideas of the original game in tact.
How do you draw _u r 1 with 8x8 pixel tiles?_
What does it mean to see everything at once?
What does Bitsy want?
What would Gregor Schneider do?