Score:

Glasses Piece for a Group of People

Give each other glasses to wear.
Look each other in the eyes for one minute.
Converse with each other the next.
Do not tell any one your feelings.

Statement:

I’ve always been interested in video games that challenge your emotions and make you feel something you either dislike or do not feel often. I saw other students in this class go for similar themes – “Uncomfortable Piece” and “Breakfast Orchestra Piece” come to mind, as they try to make social interactions awkward or the atmosphere odd. Of those two, my Glasses Piece score follows the same direction that “Uncomfortable Piece” does, which was based on social interaction constrained by limitations.

Fluxus scores are, by nature, extremely limited in scope. They are generally very specific instructions with a low word count designed to make you feel something new or different. I wanted to take this limited theme to an even further extreme when it came to social interaction, while also making it a little absurd by needlessly incorporating glasses into the piece (where people can think whatever they want about them). In limiting the interaction in the score to everything except feelings, players are likely to have a hard time thinking up anything to talk about.

To underscore this point, when this piece was played in class one of the players tried to bargain with me on what exactly they could say – whether something they were physically feeling was part of their “feelings” and if they could talk about it. Also, because the timing of the score is so specific one person has to keep time and things feel rushed. If a player did want to say something, they better speak quickly. However, it felt like, because this is a score for 2+ people, having more than two people would lead to someone dominating the conversation. I would want to make the game more fun (even though it is supposed to be awkward) by making it a game for two people only.

One piece in Yoko Ono’s “Grapefruit” that I was inspired by is “Snow Piece”, a cute and silly piece that doesn’t necessarily make you think of another person in a new way, but makes you see them in a visually different way. It is likely to have you avoid thinking of emotions when a person is talking, but maybe not! If they’re talking in a frenzy, perhaps there is a blizzard covering them. In the same way, I hope “Glasses Piece” would let players conjure up things that surround other players, as they’re forced to stare into each other’s eyes for a minute. When you look in to another person’s eyes, what do you see? A lot of times I imagine fire, but it depends on that person. Maybe they are staring intently at each other, or maybe they are trying to discreetly not focus on each other. The awkwardness can make it fun.

Video documentation: https://youtu.be/JPcYUbc1jQ0

Original rules:

Two players playing tic-tac-toc with additional rules:

• Each turn the player uses the marker to mark on one grid, and after that, names a body part.(left hand, right hand, left eye …whatever that makes sense and both players agrees), since then the opponent player cannot use the body part that named until the “state” resets.
• When the player was unable to play,  skip that player’s turn, and resets both players’ “state”.

Final Rules:

• Two players playing a Tic-tac-toc like game on a 9×9 grid.
• Every 3 connecting (same type) marks gives the player an extra move, and chain the marks up(circle them) to indicate they will not be applied to this rule again.
• Each turn the player uses the marker to mark on one grid, and after that, names a body part.(left hand, right hand, left eye …whatever that makes sense and both players agrees), since then the opponent player cannot use the body part that named until the “state” resets.
• When the player was unable to play,  skip that player’s turn, and resets both players’ “state”.

Iteration process:

Statement & Iteration:

I was inspired by the concept of the Dada movement that taking out the functionalities of objects and remake them to give new meanings and definitions, such as the readymades, the components were nonfunctional but with combining/modifying it makes a pretty interesting result. Same as that, to applied the similar abstract concept I was thinking of adding/combining two totally different game type/mechanics together, or taking some essential part of rules from each, to complete the appropriation.

The first idea I came out is adding physical elements to a strategic board game. To be more specific, I want to add parameters that were very difficult to measure (like basketball, the real-life physics were considered to be the parameter in this case) to a game that requires a lot of accurate calculation/strategic moves.(like chess)

So I came out with this additional rules, each turn players named a body part to limit the opponent, because I think this not only brings iterations and challenges to both of the players, also changes the game dynamic during gameplay.

So in order to make this more straight forward, I thought I would start with something more simple, such as a “solved game” as a base rule to appropriate on, because I thought adding new rules might add something new to this.

After the first playtest there is only one major issue is that the game is too short to play, so I changed the grid to 9×9 and added new adapted rules to the original tic-tac-toe, where the player can have 1 extra move when the player has 3 marks chained together.

The result turned to be pretty good, players are very creative on the use of mechanics, that it’s really difficult to predict what’s their strategy is because of the ambiguity of names of body parts, which is a very fun aspect of this game, and it’s very fun to watch people play with a lot of physical restrictions to use the marker.

The marks made on the paper, the up-left “X” was marked by the player holding the marker by his legs and finally marked on the wrong grid. (Sorry I didn’t take picture of the final playtest, but it looks pretty much the same as the first playtest posted above.)

Instructions:

The game is to be played with 2 players and the goal of this game is like the normal chess, to kill the king.

Rules:

1.When each player finish moving his piece, he should draw a movement card.

2.Each player need to draw a battle card before he start kill the enemy piece.

3.Piece can not share the same position unless the cards effect

4.Class system: There is a class system, from high to low is King, Queen Bishop, Knight, Rock, Pawn.

5.When the piece go out of the board, it dead.

6.Multiple battles:When piece fight with multiple enemies, it should fight the lower class piece first, then the higher piece can fight back.

Play-through:

First I want to say Hex is the duel king, she won all the games. Actually, I think this game is very good, after the first text on last week, I adjusted a little bit of the rules to make the game run more reasonable. It is fun when you add random factor in to a logical chess game.

When you play classic sports or games, such as Frisbee or chess, have you ever think about to change the rules, not just play like a traditional game, but add new element in it, when you find a different way to play means more fun than the old thing

Artist’s Statement:

When I decided to create a game based on the appropriate, the first image came in my mind is Marcel Duchamp’s LHOOQ, I think it is a classic example of Dada compare with traditional art. Another huge part of Dada is its collage arts. So I started to think about use this concept, try to design a game that combine lots of elements in to a classic game to make it in classical, like Marcel add the beard on Mona Lisa’s post card.

So, I came up with idea that add “beard” on classical chess, add random factor to make it looks like monopoly. Inspiration for using  chess is because I have strong impact from Fluxus.  In previous class, one the of the video was talking about two people are playing chess, then the chess board started to move and run away. People already play chess hundreds of years, but never think about to change the rules. So all the cards are related to animations, games and series, such as Yu-GI-OH,  Pokémon, dragon ball,  these make it looks like there are lots of appropriate elements involve when you play the game.

When I first time tested this game, it was not quite go as I planned, and there was also have problem in multiple battles, so after received serval suggestions, I changed some rules for multiple battles, which makes it more playable in the second test. I think it is quite good this time, and the random factor makes the game more fun than before.

Rules:
For 4 Players (and 1 moderator)

• A picture is cut up into four pieces. The moderator assigns each player one of these pieces.
• The moderator places one of the pieces face down on the table and ensures that the player has the blindfold held up to their face and is ready. Then, the piece is flipped over and the player has 10 seconds to look at and memorize the image. At this point, the other three players must be facing another direction.
• After the ten seconds are up, the player must then draw out a recreation of what they saw on a piece of paper. Once they are finished, the turn of the next player will begin. This process will continue through the players one by one.
• After all players have seen and drawn their piece, they must put together their pieces and attempt to figure out what the original image was. If their guess is correct, they win.

Documentation:

Artist’s Statement:

When we were first assigned this piece, I immediately thought of the aspect of Dadaism where something practical is altered so that it no longer functions for its original purpose.  Based off of the pieces shown in the book and some of the works that we discussed in class, this seemed to be a reoccurring theme throughout the movement and I wanted to do something in a similar vein.

With this in mind, I started to think of things that could be changed so that they would not do what they were made to do. This reminded me of a set of wash clothes that I had bought from Target a few weeks prior. I had tried to use them while cleaning my room once and found that they were absolutely terrible – if anything, they made my room messier by not absorbing anything and spreading it around instead. In a sense, the manufacturers of the wash cloth had already done my work for me. They made an object that was useless for accomplishing its original purpose.

As I was playing around with the wash cloth to see what kinds of things I could do with it, I noticed that the fabric was somewhat porous (presumably so that it would be able to soak up a mess) and if you stretched it out and looked at it from the right distance, you could see through it. It wasn’t perfectly transparent, though, so I thought that I could use it as a blindfold of sorts.

This set the goal of my game into place. To be able to decipher an image while looking through the cloth. I experimented with looking at different images while blindfolded and noted that simple, basic outlines were the best bet. But it wasn’t much of a game to simply look at a picture through a cloth and then say what it is, so I split the image into four parts to add some challenge to the game. Players would have to cooperate in order to get the whole picture.

That did, of course, add the drawing element to the game. Unless everyone had photographic memory and could perfectly describe what they had seen, they would needed to be able to draw their section. Unfortunately, the clothes weren’t long enough to be wrapped around a head and tied like a proper blindfold, so I simply had players look at the image through the cloth, then draw it afterwards. I placed a time limit on how long they could look at the image for because I noticed that, if you got skilled at stretching the cloth just right, it wasn’t much of a challenge to see through it. I gave the players 10 seconds to look at the image so that, hopefully, they wouldn’t have the time to get accustomed to using the cloth.

The actual gameplay is quick, fun, and confusing at times, which was great because I felt like those qualities kind of captured the essence of Dada.

Instructions:

The game is to be played with 3+ players

The goal of this game is to win the most amount of chips from other players.

1. Each player is dealt 2 cards and 3 Cheetos as chips
2. Place 3 cards facing up in the center of the table (these are called community cards)
3. Assign a player to begin calling stakes (in number of Cheetos betted)
4. Each player subsequently must either call, raise or fold
5. Deal an extra card once a round of calling has been ended
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 one more time
7. All players are to use their functional cards if applicable
8. Remaining players show cards to determine the winner, whom takes all betted chips

The winner is determined by possessing the better hand, the rules are:

• High > Low
• Same suit > varying suits
• 3 consecutive numbers > Pair
• 3 of the same > 3 consecutive numbers
• If +2 or +4 is shown, add the respective number of cards to the community deck
• If color changing card is shown, the player may switch any card for a card in the deck
• Skip and reverse cards are not available

Ideation

I have always been an avid card game enthusiast, whether that is Poker, UNO or almost any variation of card games that involves a bit of strategy and reading the group. To me, I find it very enjoyable as it’s not strictly relied on the mastery of a skill such as professional sports, and it’s also not too random as the likes of Rock, Paper, Scissors or flipping a coin.

However, creating this game was initially very difficult simply because my mind was going through too many possible card games and I didn’t have a good starting point. Finally, I decided to reverse-engineer the ideation process and start with a theme and message instead of starting with a game to appropriate. I had a lot of fun playing around with the idea of Fluxus from my Score assignment and wanted an element of that, whilst also incorporating some of my understanding of Dada. I arrived at the conclusion that I was certain  I wanted to create a multiplayer game that had both an element of skill and luck within, which is when 2 of my favorite games came to mind — Texas Holdem and UNO.

Inspiration

One of the reasons I chose this game for my final iteration is because I was very excited about the changes in the meaning. I saw this a perfect fit with the material I learned from Dada, where one is encouraged to create new meanings by presenting something to people in a new perspective. In this instance, I have turned Texas Holdem, a game known for being very strategic, calculative and detail-oriented into an unpredictable one that relies greatly on instinct. As a Business student, this is even more interesting, as I am trained to look for patterns and reduce risk, and now I am forced to embrace the unknown. In this game, neither the number of players or even number of cards is known, with the latter also being potentially subject to change during the game.

Another concept that I incorporated was the “happening” from the Fluxus. After all the cards are dealt, any wild cards held by the players (if any) directly changes the deck either by switching out cards in the community deck and players’ hands, or adding cards to the community deck. This creates a great element of surprise that cannot be planned. In regular Texas Holdem, a player knows that they have 2 cards in their hands and that they will be given 5 cards in the community to work with; whereas in this case, one could have both their cards switched out with 9 cards to play with. The unpredictability is also increased with a larger number of players.

Play-testing

Play-testing this game was very fun, with a total of 4 players and 2 rounds, there was a round with multiple wild cards and a community deck size of 9, and another round where no wild cards were shown and maintained the default size of 5. My classmates seemed to respond positively and I was very happy with the game overall.

Objective: To get the most points by scoring balls of used paper in the recycle bin.

Rules:

Scoring from the first floor stairs is 1 point. 2 points from the second floor, and 3 points from the 3rd floor. If a shot goes in the trash, its -1 point.

Each player gets 5 shots.

The players alternate turns between shots. The player with the most points by the end wins.

Artist Statement:

I had trouble coming up with ideas for a game using appropriated material. I wasn’t sure what to make, and what to transform. The idea came about when I was leaving class. I walked by and saw the trash cans, and the way they were set up reminded me of basketball hoops. This made me think of transforming people’s views on trash and recycling through a game. Learning about the Fluxus movement, and how they wanted to separate boundaries between life and art, my game is my attempt.
Inspiration for using the staircase came from 3 semesters ago. I got to witness Celia Pearce’s class drop mini beanie bags from the 2nd story rails while people with boxes on their heads ran along the first floor randomly trying to catch them. The use of heights, a staircase, used for connecting different levels of structure would be symbolic of my scoring system. I think my piece embodies more Fluxus than Dada since it available to the masses. Everyday people recycle paper and plastics, and throw away trash. Yet, people still remain ignorant to the fact that they have a part in hurting the environment whenever they throw recyclables in the trash. This way, by attempting to break the barrier of art and everyday life, people can educate themselves while having fun. This will give the player, the control of shaping the piece. That being what they choose to shoot in the recycling bin, or the trash can. This pulls more from Fluxus, since it is a process which is for creating rather having an end product, which is influenced by the ideologies of John Cage. The end product would be the outcome of the environment.

My first iteration of this, I hadn’t thought of the recycling bin. I had just seen the trash cans, and they looked perfect for the game I was going to make. After a  few playtests, I realized it had no meaning to me other than basketball with paper. I then saw the recycling bin, and thought that I could address the differences between the two of them, using my game. Since its more common for people throw away anything into the trash, I would make that a consequence. This way people would become more aware of recycling and their focus would adjust accordingly.

The Goals

3rd floor

Winner