"This is art," Sony producer Rusty Buchert told me in Los Angeles last month as he showed me what looked and played like an interactive real-time cut-scene on the PlayStation 3. He was showing me "Linger In Shadows," the product of a handful of Polish programmers and artists who have created an artistically ambiguous and technically ambitious nine-minute controlled flight through a digital dreamscape.
"Linger In Shadows" is partially personal, though I can't yet interpret what the flying dog may represent, nor the floating mask and tendrils. It's partially a programming tour-de-force, something that Buchert said is " making the hardware stand up and beg." (Advanced oil-painting effects; procedural fur; other things that are said to wow tech people within Sony, etc. -- see some of it here.) It's all art.
So… how do you sell art on the PS3? Buchert had a neat idea.