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Trail: GardenArt Book48 14 2010-03-01 CeremonyOfInnocence

CeremonyOfInnocence

ElegantMedia Games

Ceremony of Innocence is a CD-ROM adaptation of the Nick Bantock's GRIFFIN & SABINE trilogy of books. Described as a 'spellbinding electronic theatre of the imagination', it stars starring Paul McGann, Isabella Rossellini, and Ben Kingsley. Within an enchanting interactive environment, Ceremony of Innocence conjures up the mystical story of Griffin and Sabine - a young English artist and his sphinx-like South Sea Island muse. Experience all fifty-eight cards and letters as they burst into life through interactive riddles, animation, film, video, fine art and photomontage.

Ceremony of Innocence features a wealth of different forms of imagery that together create an audio-visual world, capable of responding to the viewer's actions. Within this environment are interactive life-forms that were created and animated using many different techniques.

After three years in the making, Ceremony of Innocence swept the electronic media awards around the globe including the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the INVISION gold medal, best of show at the EURO PRIX, New York Festival gold medal, EMMA (European Multimedia Award), Australia's gold ATOM and AIMIA Awards, plus Canada's Atlantic Digital Media Award.

The New York Times said the Ceremony of Innocence is "...a seductive interactive collage. This is a work of trained artists. It's not just technically impressive. It is genuinely sophisticated. And in many ways, Ceremony surpasses its printed source. Griffin and Sabine couldn't have done it better themselves."

Creative Director and Chief Designer: Alex Mayhew

Producer: Gerrie Villon

Executive Producer: Peter Gabriel


TheSecondComing

Quoth

THE SECOND COMING
By W.B. Yeats (1920)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


W. B. Yeats1


A CD-ROM


CeremonyOfInnocence-image
somewhere between a game, a novel, a short film
made by Real World Multimedia and based on the Griffon and Sabine Trilogy novels by Nick Bantock2
The books themselves were quite interactive. They are what i will call meaningful kitch: Beautiful in the way that office ladies can appreciate. But the interactive project is something else. The way it unfolds is pleasant and one falls easily into the narrative and symbolism.

I will have to describe more what it is i like about the interaction
Interview with Peter Gabriel about this CD: http://hawk.fab2.albany.edu/bantock/gabriel.htm
Interview with Alex Mayhew (Designer/Art Director): http://www.storycenter.org/diner/pages/am1.html

a review:
http://archive.salon.com/21st/reviews/1998/11/13review.html

Footnotes:

2. still available on Amazon! ;)