Hundred Rabbits
Hundred Rabbits, also stylized as 100 Rabbits is a two-person art collective of Devine Lu Linvega and Rek Bell. Hundred Rabbits is known for their work on software projects inspired by permacomputing created in response to the technological limitations of living on a sailboat. Among their work is the Uxn virtual machine and Varvara digital computing stack upon which they and the Uxn community build software designed for longevity using the assembly language Uxntal.
Background
Hundred Rabbits is a two-person art collective of Devine Lu Linvega and Rek Bell.[1][2][3] Outside their[lower-alpha 1] work as a software developer, Linvega also creates music under the name "Aliceffekt." Bell is an illustrator and a writer.[1]
History
Hundred Rabbits first started to liveaboard in 2016. They have said they were inspired by watching liveaboard videos online to buy a 1982 Yamaha sailboat which they refer to as Pino,[1] where they live, create games and document their travels. Neither Linvega or Bell had experience as sailors prior to them moving onto Pino.[2] At the time, their work was partially supported by Patreon donations. Linvega and Bell also maintained remote jobs they could complete from their sailboat to support their projects. Hundred Rabbits has said they were motivated to liveaboard following frustration with living a sedentary life.[2]
Their first project was a video game named Oquonie, which they created while in Thailand.[2]
In 2017, Hundred Rabbits shifted their focus towards building software in the spirit of permacomputing after their struggle to download the latest version of Xcode, an integrated development environment required for developing software for Apple platforms. While the update was 10GB, they were limited by a 5GB cellular data plan. Permacomputing is a computing philosophy that rejects aspects of modern computing culture and practice in favour of sustainability, repairability, long-term thinking and individual empowerment.[1]
Hundred Rabbits initially considered building on the Nintendo Entertainment System as a simple and offline-first platform, before creating the Uxn virtual platform and Varvara portable computing system. Uxn attracted a small community of developers interested in using it to create tools and games, citing the platform's simplicity and accessibility.[1]
Projects
Oquonie
Oquonie was the first video game that Linvega and Bell created together.[2]
Uxn and Varvara
Uxn is a simple virtual machine and Varvara is a portable computing system built on top of it. Uxn can run on old devices, such as the Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance and Raspberry Pi Pico
Programs for Uxn work like video game ROMs and are written in an assembly language known as Uxntal, or TAL. The build of the Uxn desktop emulator distributed by Hundred Rabbits ships with several programs including writing tools, sketching tools, and an experimental live coding tool known as Orca. Additional programs have been developed by the Uxn community.[1]
Style and philosophy
Hundred Rabbits creates games based on their experiences as seafarers.[2] They often incorporate storytelling into their work, particularly through illustrations created by Bell.[1]
The limitations of living at sea, which lead to their reliance on solar energy, small batteries and donated, second-hand hardware also informs their use of technology. Hundred Rabbits has argued that the technologies with the greatest longevity are those that rely on common, portable, low-technology. They also argue that building on simple virtual machines serves this criteria because they are easy to port to new devices. Further, they believe using open-source software is preferable for living within limits due to the availability of documentation and for how it enables individuals to troubleshoot and solve problems on their own.[1]
Research (delete before publishing)
- Linvega and Bell are a couple
- Linvega and Bell were not sailors
- Linvega and Bell are a couple
- By 2020 they'd sailed to Japan, Mexico and California
- They are Canadian by origin
- Prior to January 2016 they lived in an apartment in Montreal.
- In January 2016 they moved out of their apartment and onto a sailboat
- The boat
- Called Pino
- 10 meters long
- Fiber glass
- 1982
- Was docked in Victoria, British Columbia.
- Linvega and Bell originally met in Japan
- They were inspired to move onto Pino having watched videos of others living on boats.
- Their journey started by travelling south along the Pacific Coast of the US to Mexico.
- Travels continued to French Polynesia, Japan, and back to the Canadian Pacific coast.
- After they bought Pino they decided to remove a lot of the technology, including the refrigerator and hot water tank as they would not have been able to repair it mid journey
- Linvega is a video game programmer
- Bell creates digital drawings
- Their video games are characteristically "low tech," particularly in their use of colour, music and internet-access. Their games run entirely offline.
- Linvega and Bell are a couple
- Bell is an illustrator and writer
- Linvega is a programmer and musician
- Linvega has an appreciation for minimalism and open source software
- Orca
- Linvega created Orca as an experimental audio sequencer attuned to his particular needs
- Linvega described AI as the end result of "human-centric" programming, where the computer acts in service of the desire of the human programmer, rather than the human programmer working to meet the needs of the computer. They identify this as a problem in the context of computer efficiency; the decrease in demand for skills in low-level programming will increase demand for computer resources to support the abstractions required to do high-level programming.
- Linvega described efficiency in programming as "the least amount of transformation of state possible."
- Rek's name is Rek
- Linvega and Bell are partners
- Linvega uses low-level programming languages like Forth.
- They use low-level programming in order to maximize their use of the limited computing resources they have available
- Linvega and Bell have been living full-time on a boat in the north Pacific since 2016
- Collapse OS presents a pessimistic vision of how we can salvage computing through societal collapse
- Tiffany Ng contrasted the Collapse OS vision of the future of computing with Linvega's, which she described as more optimistic. Linvega believes that low-level programming could help to prevent a societal collapse
- Permacomputing: computing philosophy that encourages people to be mindful of their usage of technology and aware of the limited nature of computing resources
- Originally from Montreal
- Linvega and Bell are partners
- The boat was created before either of them were born
- They document their lives in work in hopes of inspiring others to practice resiliency
- Their decision to move on a boat was motivated by their desire to live sustainable, resilient lives, using little electricity
- When they first bought the boat, they knew nothing about boats.
- Linvega has said that although they wanted to inspire others by their lifestyle choices, they recognize that living on a sailboat "isn't scalable"
- In order to download an OS update they put their phone in a plastic bag and raised it on their mast.
- The SIM cards they owned could only download at most 5GB of data, so they had to swap out the sim cards after they reached their limit. If the process crashed at any point, they had to start over.
- After trying to download large updates a couple of times, they decided they would need to find a new approach to their work.
- Their first move after abandoning their efforts to develop on iOS was to develop for the NES in Assembly. Their NES games could be used on modern devices using NES emulators
- Prior to 2015 Linvega and Bell lived in Japan
- in 2015, Linvega's work visa was denied renewal, so Linvega and Bell returned to Montreal
- Montreal was their hometown
- The decision to move onto a boat came in part from a desire to find a new way to live a mobile and minimalist lifestyle without needing to relocate all their belongings to new locations and go through the process of acquiring and renewing visas.
- Boat is a 1982 Yamaha Sloop named Pino
- 33 feat long, 50 feat tall.
- Was $38,000 at purchase
- They were able to buy the boat with the support of 170 Patreon backers
- Linvega and Bell are a couple
- In their first six months aboard they travelled around the coast of British Columbia. Later, they began travelling south to San Francisco after a storm struck and cancelled their plans to sail to Hawaii.
- Around mid 2016 Hundred Rabbits was working on a game called Markle
- Turn-based puzzle platformer
- Markle uses a fictional language that the player needs to interpret.
- The player interprets the language with the help of context clues.
- The game was inspired by Linvega and Bell's experience trying to understand their boat's manual which was written in Japanese.
- Their work is supported by backers on Patreon.
- Linvega and Bell create videos of their travels in exchange for the funding they get from contributors.
- Bell is an illustrator
- Linvega is a web developer
- Linvega and Bell planned a 4-week trip to Hawaii, starting Canada Day
- Pino comes from the cyberpunk character of the same name from anime Ergo Proxy
See also
External links
Notes
- ↑ Both Linvega and Bell use singular they pronouns.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Ong, Alexis (7 March 2022). "These artists are making tiny ROMs that will probably outlive us all". The Verge. Retrieved 21 May 2025.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 Nguyen, Clinton (11 December 2015). "The Game Design Studio on a Boat". Motherboard. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 21 May 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ 3.0 3.1 "about". 100R. Retrieved 22 May 2025.
- ↑ Nguyen, Clinton (11 December 2015). "The Game Design Studio on a Boat". Motherboard. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016. Retrieved 21 May 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Picault, Hilaire (1 October 2020). "Depuis quatre ans, ce couple vit et travaille sur un voilier". CANAL+ (in français). Archived from the original on 27 October 2020. Retrieved 24 May 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Cafeine (31 May 2019). "Le code qui venait de l'eau". Geekzone. Retrieved 24 May 2025.
- ↑ Ng, Tiffany (26 March 2025). "The Best Programming Language for the End of the World". Wired. Retrieved 24 May 2025.
- ↑ Wood, Molly (5 December 2020). "How We Survive: A changing mindset". Marketplace. Retrieved 24 May 2025.
- ↑ Knoop, Joseph (22 August 2016). "Planes, Games, and Automobiles: The Nomads of Game Development". Vice. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 24 May 2025. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Logan, Amy (12 August 2016). "Vancouver trending: Life aboard a boat lures new generation of romantics". Metro News. Archived from the original on 15 August 2016. Retrieved 24 May 2025.
- ↑ Chia, Kenny (12 July 2016). "Two Canadian game developers set sail around the world". DailyHive. Retrieved 24 May 2025.
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