Students Turn Minecraft Into Interactive Art Exhibit

[Tom Goldman]

Students Turn Minecraft Into Interactive Art Exhibit

A project called Meatcraft turned the world of Minecraft into an interactive art exhibit.

An art exhibit that ran for four days in mid-March at San Jose State University called Meatcraft was a Minecraft fan's dream. It brought the blocks, tools, and enemies found in the game into the real world, and let visitors mine away for rewards they could take home.

The Meatcraft exhibit featured crafting tables, scale 1-meter Minecraft-style cubes, LED torches, a greeter in a Creeper costume, and an interactive mini-block world. Meatcraft creators Jeffrey Kam and Cody McCabe also had ideas to add animals, music, a day/night cycle, and minecarts, but had to keep the project's scope within reason.

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The mini-block world looks like it was one of the most fun aspects of the exhibit. Participants could pick up and build with various types of cubes while also digging for ore, particularly diamonds, which could be exchanged for Minecraft tools such as swords and pick-axes that they could keep. Not to mention the exhibit also provided free grass-block brownies.

Kam and McCabe observed that some visitors simply wanted to watch and were completely unfamiliar with Minecraft, while others got right to business building structures. They wrote: "It was interesting to see the relation between Minecraft players and our gallery visitors. All the visitors, both those whom had played Minecraft and those whom hadn't, seemed to reflect a type of Minecraft player."

The exhibit should be a great motivator to get Mojang to release a Minecraft playset. Who wouldn't want one of those?

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun [http://realworldminecraft.com/]

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[Arachon]

See guys? Art can be awesome!

 

[emeraldrafael]

You know, I remember when the cool thing used to be Legos.

But meh, Minecraft is lego, and its only a matter of time before Notch and whoever is running Lego as majority leader reaches an agreement/lawsuit and they combine/one comes out on top.

 

[Keltzar]

You know, I remember when the cool thing used to be Legos.

But meh, Minecraft is lego, and its only a matter of time before Notch and whoever is running Lego as majority leader reaches an agreement/lawsuit and they combine/one comes out on top.

Minecraft is similar to Lego but not similar enough for the Lego company to ever sue them. They don't have the rights to things involving building stuff with blocks because that's entirely too broad.

 

[emeraldrafael]

You know, I remember when the cool thing used to be Legos.

But meh, Minecraft is lego, and its only a matter of time before Notch and whoever is running Lego as majority leader reaches an agreement/lawsuit and they combine/one comes out on top.

Minecraft is similar to Lego but not similar enough for the Lego company to ever sue them. They don't have the rights to things involving building stuff with blocks because that's entirely too broad.

If Notch ever puts out a minecraft set to built that links together, he'll be hard pressed to make one that doesnt look like a Lego is all I'm saying.

 

[John the Gamer]

It looks... Surreal; Like the blocks and tools were just pulled straight out of the game... It's probably the 16-bit textures doing that, but it gave me a weird feeling. Minecraft is taking over the world. And nobody'll notice.

 

[AugustFall]

When I saw the iron I immediately though, "Hell yeah, I needed iron."

 

[teqrevisited]

That's it. Draw them in with your grass-block brownies, and then convince them to ssssstay.

 

[Wicky_42]

But meh, Minecraft is lego, and its only a matter of time before Notch and whoever is running Lego as majority leader reaches an agreement/lawsuit and they combine/one comes out on top.

Lol, law fail :3

OT: cute idea, nicely executed. Would like to see those sort of blocks with some sort of fixing - magnetic, maybe, if the polarisation could be worked out - to allow the sort of impossible structures from the game to begun being made

 

[spectrenihlus]

You know, I remember when the cool thing used to be Legos.

But meh, Minecraft is lego, and its only a matter of time before Notch and whoever is running Lego as majority leader reaches an agreement/lawsuit and they combine/one comes out on top.

Minecraft is similar to Lego but not similar enough for the Lego company to ever sue them. They don't have the rights to things involving building stuff with blocks because that's entirely too broad.

If Notch ever puts out a minecraft set to built that links together, he'll be hard pressed to make one that doesnt look like a Lego is all I'm saying.

Megablocks

that is all

 

[IndianaJonny]

You know, I remember when the cool thing used to be Legos.

But meh, Minecraft is lego, and its only a matter of time before Notch and whoever is running Lego as majority leader reaches an agreement/lawsuit and they combine/one comes out on top.

Minecraft is similar to Lego but not similar enough for the Lego company to ever sue them. They don't have the rights to things involving building stuff with blocks because that's entirely too broad.

Well, the Danes (Lego) and the Swedes(Mojang) are pretty much neighbours so perhaps these Scandinavians are just really good at building (building) games.

OT: That must have taken a long time to put together. Kudos to the team.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Lol, law fail :3

Most likely, I only had one half semester of Business Law.

 

[weirdee]

While lego stuff does have their own rights to certain things, it still can't stop other people from making interlinking block sets that are different enough to slip past those rights.

That being said, if they do make an official physical version they better hope to match the quality of lego because everything else I've tried was a piece of crap compared to them

 

[Dreamstalker]

I would have gone right at that creeper with the sword. Maybe I could've gotten a 'chev for doing it too.

 

[PurpleTartan]

That's looks Kinda fun!

 

[Antari]

The greeter was a creeper? ... How many people ran screaming from it? I'd have a seriously hard time approaching someone dressed like that.

 

[Chris646]

It would be awesome to have a Minecraft playset, but if they did release one, how would people build their floating towers and houses? And how would blocks stay in the air like they do in Minecraft?
But yeah, it'd be awesome.

 

[WaffleCopters]

i have all the respect for lego, it being my childhood memory. but they arent really adding new stuff, theyre just reusing old ideas.