The two- dimensional stills plastered on the gallery’s walls are thumbnails that merely hint at the true scope of Chyr’s work.Ī middle-aged art professor stares at the limitless architecture on the screen with an expression of incomprehension. In other words, the real exhibit isn’t here, not in this physical space. “It’s virtual space where you control everything.” “If you want to do installation art these days, video games seem like the perfect evolution,” he says, the words, as always, leaving his mouth slowly, like he’s measuring each syllable. The 29-year-old, known to some as Willy, is slight of frame, his look distinctive only in its uniformity: long black hair that he wears slicked into a ponytail, white-framed glasses, and loose-fitting V-neck T-shirts. After navigating the game’s unseen avatar through a network of palatial rooms, he hurtles the character into space, passing a series of skyscrapers, beams, and stairways that twist and turn and seem to go on forever.Ĭhyr is expressionless as he toggles through the game. The exhibit isn’t particularly interesting until the moment Chyr nudges the twin sticks on his PlayStation controller, jolting into motion Manifold Garden’s fantastical world. But the prints affixed to Mana Contemporary’s austere walls are sparse and chilly. ![]() “But the amazing thing about games is that you’re experiencing them exactly as the artist intended-through the video game console and TV.”Īnd yet Chyr is not opposed to the old- fashioned gallery show. Most people haven’t, they’ve just seen it indirectly in magazines,” he says when asked about the switch from physical art to the virtual kind. Before he decided back in November 2012 to try his hand at making a video game, he was exhibiting a much different kind of work: larger than life-size balloon sculptures informed by everything from everyday flora to otherworldly fauna. But tonight he’s presenting the game in a context he’s more familiar with-an art gallery. Chyr describes the narrative as “like a parable, like ‘God created the world in seven days’ level of storytelling.” It’s a game about learning the cosmology and physical rules of a beautiful but alien space.Ĭhyr has previewed Manifold Garden at least a dozen times before-but only at gaming conventions, where it’s been nominated for awards by major video game websites and generated significant buzz that helped the title land on the most-anticipated releases of 2016 lists of numerous critics. It’s also notable for what it lacks: there are no characters, not a word of dialogue, and no traditional story. ![]() The game itself is groundbreaking in its rendering of impossibly labyrinthine architecture and the gravity-defying gameplay in which the physical laws of the universe are malleable-a player can shift gravity, turning walls into floors. ![]() Between bites of cheese and sips of wine, attendees gaze at prints of game screenshots depicting a series of complex symmetrical structures in muted colors that call to mind blueprints for skyscrapers as devised by M.C. On a chilly Friday night last October, William Chyr is standing in the center of the Pilsen art gallery Mana Contemporary, a beer in one hand, a PlayStation controller in the other.Ī mix of well-heeled art patrons and casually dressed twentysomethings has crowded into the compact space for an offbeat exhibit, “Manifold Garden,” a sneak peek at the still-unfinished puzzle-based video game of the same name that Chyr’s been toiling at for years to design and build for PC and Sony’s PlayStation 4. Best of Chicago 2022: Music & Nightlife. ![]() Best of Chicago 2022: Sports & Recreation.
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