ScruTiny in the Great Round was awarded the MILIA d'Or Grand Prix, one of the most prestigious awards of the multimedia industry, at this year's International Publishing and New Media Market Conference (MILIA) in Cannes. Last year's grand prize went to the popular multimedia game MYST, and "ScruTiny" is not only MYSTerious enough to be a more than worthy successor for the Grand Prix--it takes the meaning of interactivity in multimedia art to new levels.
"ScruTiny" is the CD-ROM incarnation of a book of collage art created by New York artist Tennessee Rice Dixon, which was "translated" into its new medium in a collaborative effort by Dixon and multimedia artist Jim Gasperini, with composer Charlie Morrow contributing the music and sounds. "ScruTiny" isn't a narrative in any conventional sense--Calliope President Robert Winter describes it as an "interactive dream"--however, the composition of collages consisting of morphing images, animated sequences and 3-D elements tells a powerful story.
"ScruTiny" is a mythic, archetypal rendition of the cycles of life that seems to spring 'unfiltered' from the unconscious mind. The interface design permits intuitive access to the 'spirit' of the art: you access "ScruTiny" by entering dark woods. The basic structure is formed by a variety of scenes, each of them a piece of collage art. In the center of each scene the cursor takes the form of a sun or a moon, both of which exist in two forms, a bright active and a dark inactive; when the cursor is bright, clicking will initiate a sequence. Users may thus explore the CD-ROM on a sun or a moon level; either choice provides scenes on a specific theme reflecting a sun or a moon perspective. Depending on the level you choose, the cursor will take the form of a bird (sun level) or a fish (moon level) on the left and right side of the screen, and clicking will bring you to the next or previous scene within the sun or moon cycle. Spiritual, gothic and mysterious, "ScruTiny" journeys into the symbolic realms of Romance, Pregnancy, Nesting, Recollection, Confrontation et al., and all of these realms have their incarnation on the sun and the moon level. It wouldn't do "ScruTiny" any justice to classify the sun/moon level in terms of a male/female dichotomy; both levels offer a different take on their subject--the moon level certainly has a darker and even more dreamy feel to it--and it is always fascinating to compare the sun and moon version of a specific subject.
The CD-ROM is indeed, as Dixon puts it, "scrutinizing in the great round of life": the morphing images suggest seasons passing and cycles of death and birth, blending various symbols from Greek and Egyptian mythology and Buddhist religion, such as fertility symbols or mandalas. Some images are combined with texts, for example, a reading from the Bhagavad-Gita proclaiming the deathlessness of the spirit. "ScruTiny" manages to strike a remarkable balance: although there is an openness and randomness to the 'perpetual motion' of its sequences, the underlying metaphors manage to create a feeling of unity. Certain symbols and images, for example, horses and sea-horses, appear in different scenes and realms, thus defying any simple symbolic categorization and unifying ambiguous concepts. "ScruTiny" itself seems to become a kind of digital mandala: an instrument of meditation that visualizes a succession of perfected realms in the great wheel of life.
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