Staying in to Play

Sometimes it's more fun to be indoors. That's what UK-based artist John Paul Bichard wants us to believe with 'Staying in to Play,' a first-person 3D environment for mental contemplation and exploring altered states. With a 90-day development cycle (ongoing until June 28) from start to finish, the spaces inside -- which include long White Stripes-inspired red hallways with moving text, mountainous terrain, and floating amorphous rooms -- are both calming and pseudo-representational. Visitors can move freely, float, or teleport to different world locations or try out a cool 'anti-matter' beam to propel them into mid-air. On the physical side, Bichard's created a downloadable PDF 'skybox' of the landscape that can be printed out and folded into a nice accompaniment for your mouse. -Jonah Brucker-Cohen