Ben Chang

Director, Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) & Professor, Arts Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

  • Troy NY

Explores the intersections of virtual environments and experimental gaming with contemporary media art

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Spotlight

1 min

This Video Game Can Teach You How to Bring a Vaccine to Market

Getting a drug or vaccine from the research bench to the bedside of a patient in need is a complex process, and one that researchers around the globe are currently trying to navigate as quickly as possible to address the spread of COVID-19. To improve understanding of this intricate, interdisciplinary undertaking, faculty and students in the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences (GSAS) program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai Hospital, are developing a video game called "Cure Quest." This game will help bridge the gap in med school education between the clinical side of medicine and basic research. “Cure Quest will allow medical students to tie together the necessary steps for vaccine development in dramatic cases like we’re seeing right now with COVID-19,” said Ben Chang, a professor of arts and Director of GSAS at Rensselaer, “or in drugs we would use day-to-day.” The main character in the game is sent to an island where there is a new disease and must overcome obstacles in their pursuit of creating a new drug to cure the disease. When its development is complete, Chang envisions Cure Quest being used by the general public, as well by students in scientific and medical fields, to better understand the drug development pipeline. Chang is available to speak about Cure Quest and the use of video games as important educational tools.

Ben Chang

Areas of Expertise

Digital Games
Immersive Visualization Systems
Experimental Gaming
Electronic Art
Virtual Environments
Contemporary Media Art
Game Development

Biography

Ben Chang is an electronic artist and director of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer. His work explores the intersections of virtual environments and experimental gaming with contemporary media art. Using materials ranging from immersive visualization systems to modified surveillance cameras, hacked video games, and antique telegraphs, his work brings out the chaotic, human qualities in technological systems.

As an electronic artist, Chang’s own work is at the intersection of virtual environments, experimental gaming, and contemporary media art.

“I’m interested in what you could call evocative and poetic experiences within technological systems — creating that powerful experience that you can get from great music, theater, books, and paintings through immersive and interactive simulations as well,” Chang said. “But I’m also interested in the experiences of being human – the human qualities that are still there - within technological systems.”

Chang’s recent projects include a suite of classic games rewritten for the Microsoft Kinnect system, a virtual reality environment about remembrance in memorial of the Holocaust, and “Becoming” a computer-driven video installation that interchanges the attributes of two animated figures.

His installations, performances, and immersive virtual reality environments have been exhibited in numerous venues and festivals worldwide, including Art Basal Miami, Boston CyberArts, SIGGRAPH, the FILE International Electronic Language Festival in Sao Paulo, the Athens MediaTerra Festival, the Wired NextFest, and the Vancouver New Forms Festival, among others. He has designed interactive exhibits for museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Field Museum of Natural History.

Media

Education

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago

MFA

Art and Technology

2000

Amherst College

B.A.

Computer Science

1998

Media Appearances

Push to expand digital gaming industry in NYS

ABC News- News10 Albany  tv

2022-03-21

Benjamin Chang, Director of Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said award winning games have come from New York Studios. “What this tax credit it will do, is really act as a multiplier,” explained Chang. “It’s going to take that kind of innovation that these studios and designers and developers and schools have all put into creating games here and really take it to the next level.”

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Video game leader on what the Capital Region's cluster needs next. (Hint: It's money)

Albany Business Review  print

2021-10-14

Leaders of the video game industry in the Capital Region are working to create a recognized hub of companies and talent. Ben Chang thinks the region is on the right track toward making that happen. Chang is co-director of games and simulation arts and sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and he’s director of the NYSTAR-backed Center of Excellence in Digital Game Development.

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RPI's GameFest goes virtual for second year

WNYT-NBC  tv

2021-05-07

Ben Chang, a professor and director of the Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, speaks to WNYT NBC News about GameFest 2021.

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Articles

Game engines and immersive displays

The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality 2014

Benjamin Chang; Marc Destefano

2014

While virtual reality and digital games share many core technologies, the programming environments, toolkits, and workflows for developing games and VR environments are often distinct. VR toolkits designed for applications in visualization and simulation often have a different feature set or design philosophy than game engines, while popular game engines often lack support for VR hardware. Extending a game engine to support systems such as the CAVE gives developers a unified development environment and the ability to easily port projects, but involves challenges beyond just adding stereo 3D visuals. In this paper we outline the issues involved in adapting a game engine for use with an immersive display system including stereoscopy, tracking, and clustering, and present example implementation details using Unity3D. We discuss application development and workflow approaches including camera management, rendering synchronization, GUI design, and issues specific to Unity3D, and present examples of projects created for a multi-wall, clustered, stereoscopic display.

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Dots and dashes: art, virtual reality, and the telegraph

The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality

Silvia Ruzanka; Ben Chang

2009

Dots and Dashes is a virtual reality artwork that explores online romance over the telegraph, based on Ella Cheever Thayer's novel Wired Love - a Romance in Dots and Dashes (an Old Story Told in a New Way)1. The uncanny similarities between this story and the world of today's virtual environments provides the springboard for an exploration of a wealth of anxieties and dreams, including the construction of identities in an electronically mediated environment, the shifting boundaries between the natural and machine worlds, and the spiritual dimensions of science and technology. In this paper we examine the parallels between the telegraph networks and our current conceptions of cyberspace, as well as unique social and cultural impacts specific to the telegraph. These include the new opportunities and roles available to women in the telegraph industry and the connection between the telegraph and the Spiritualist movement. We discuss the development of the artwork, its structure and aesthetics, and the technical development of the work.

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