Month: November 2016

Weighing Game

Number of players: At least 2

The pieces:

One “deck” composed of the “cards”, who are human participants (of which there needs to be at least 4 times the number of players)

One scale

A die/random number generator and picker

Pen and paper

Goal: To have the combined total of the weights of your cards get as close as possible, but not exceed, a weight decided on by the players before the game.

Instructions:

  1. The two players take a look at the “deck” and agree on a weight to match and not exceed.
  2. Assign each “card” a number out of the total number of cards, and have each player draw two cards to start, as they would in the game blackjack.
  3. Weigh each of the two cards discreetly, with only each player knowing their own cards’ weights.
  4. Have the players record their own cards’ weights and total them.
  5. Each player, one at a time, can then “hit” or “stay” depending on if they want to draw another card or keep their current hand.
    • If a player hits, they then weigh their new card and add the weight to their previous cards’ weights. That is their new total.
    • If a player stays, then they keep their current total weight and are unable to hit any more.
  6. Repeat step 5 as necessary.
  7. Once both players stay, each player reveals the total of their weights. Whoever has a total weight closer to the agreed-upon weight wins.

Artist Statement:

I wanted to create a game that could be picked up at any time (as long as the instructions are understood!). A significant number of households are likely to have a scale, so all you need otherwise are people who are willing to participate. This game could be fun with the right crowd, but I understand that most people feel somewhat uncomfortable with their weight. Still, Weighing Game is my appropriated solution to the game Blackjack. By solution, I mean that it cuts down on the randomness inherent in Blackjack and is very modular – the rules allow for different goals at the players discretion, whether it just be that they agree on a completely random number or that they take a look at the participants and decide a goal based in their judgments. Weighing Game also gives you a smaller “deck” with pre-defined weights, but it does involve some skill in judging what the weights are before you hit or stay. It’s a very judgmental game, period.

In the vein of being a judgmental game, however, I tried to make it so the game doesn’t discriminate against smaller or larger people. If you have a larger audience, then you can make the weight goal larger, and vice versa. However, the game is likely to make people feel bad if they cause a player’s weight total to go over the goal. It’s not a fair game for anyone, really, because so much judgment of actual people is needed.

A lot of games and pieces of appropriation in the Dada and Fluxus movements are interesting, maybe funny, almost always winks at whoever is looking on at the games and pieces, with ready-mades such as “Fountain” and “Bicycle Wheel” being early examples and the many, many chess variations (possibly most notably Yoko Ono’s “White Chess”) being a later ones. They also, much of the time, comment on a current feeling, whether that feeling is about capitalism or war or any other big thing. And, as Duchamp always wanted, some of them are intentionally not aesthetically appealing (even though, as we learned in class, sometimes art is considered more appealing as it is looked at more positively over time).

The Weighing Game is not particularly appealing to play, and it can be disgusting. I am not too happy with having made it – the potential for fun is there if you play with a really tight-knit group of friends, but I do not see any other groups enjoying it too much. I usually want games that I make to be enjoyable in some way, or at least interesting. I’m not sure if Weighing Game is really either of those.

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Artwork #3 Intervention Final- Ilayda Hanci

Artwork #3: Intervene Final

Ilayda Hanci

“Good Vibes”

Motivation plays an important role in our society because it provides the drive for people to accomplish their goals, maintain their responsibilities or solve problems. The main idea of my game intervenes with people’s emotional states. Motivation can be created or re-sparked by simply anything. Motivation can be difficult for people who work in professional office settings where they may feel their hard work goes unnoticed or the constant pressures of a competitive environment wear them down. Moreover, we know that the biggest problem about our current education system is; it did not motivate students. I want to show with my piece that, everybody needs good stuff in their life and they can smile by playing a simple and an easy game.

For this piece, I made a sign declaring that everybody needs something in their life and they can just simply acquire that by taking the word they need from the board. The goal was directly intervening with people’s needs and desires about what they want in their life and what they desire the most to get.

My piece is a large Bristol Board with 14 piece of words attached to it. On the paper is the following: “Please take whatever you need today and choose to believe”. I think it has its own charm. When looking through the readings, I mostly influenced by Yoko Ono’s pieces as she asks the question to audience and lets the audience to create the piece. She definetly has a different style to impact people with her acts and  pieces, and I followed her path in this project.

In a various number of places and at various times of day I put the sign and waited. In the public busy places, it took very little attention. Part of that was no doubt people were all the time on their phone while walking away from it or too busy to look at it.  The first place that took place for this piece was the Ruggles Station since it is very busy with the students and workers. I posted the board to a place where everyone can see easily while they are heading to school or to work, so they can just take a word they want, want to do, or need in their life to motivate themselves. But it didn’t work that well since everybody was too busy to catch the bust or the train and there were a lot of people so they didn’t read the message at all.

Then I moved the sign to the International Village. The sign did get a few glances, but a few stopped to read it and pick the words they need. Most of the time people were too busy looking at their phones all the time without noticing the things around them. This piece also helped me to analyze people about what was the reaction when they saw it and the influence of the smartphones in people’s daily lives. 6 out of 10 people were on their phone even if someone in front of them stopped to look at the piece.

To do list for the final:

  • Change the design of the board
  • Put it next to the elevators in IV
  • Add word “free” for example “Free Happiness”
  • Add little cute creatures to invite people

After the first iteration of my piece, I changed the design of the board to be more friendly and attractive to people who are reading it. Adding the word “free” and a little bit humor to it made people notice the board more than before. And even they didn’t pick a word, they found the design very cute by means of the cute little creatures. I again used the International Village elevators as a location because people were always waiting in the line for an elevator and it is very crowded and busy in the morning so they either look at their phones or look around the posters near the elevator to pass time while waiting.  People mostly didn’t want to get filmed or photographed because they felt being watched or get uncomfortable and run away when they noticed my phone, so I put the sign up and come back a couple of hours later. I saw they most of the words were ripped out so the new design I think worked better.

Pictures:

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First Iteration Design:

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Final Design:

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studystealth

STUDYSTEALTH

a stealth based scavenger hunt

The rules are simple. Check off the boxes, be honest, & above all, DON’T GET CAUGHT! You lose 2 points for every prudent student you disrupt.

GUIDE TO DISRUPTION: it only counts as a full disruption if the person in question makes eye contact with you.

CATEGORY ONE: 1 Point Each

Spot someone…

  • typing some sort of paper on their computer
  • writing in a notebook
  • using a calculator
  • using a pencil
  • using a blue or black pen
  • using a Mac
  • using a PC
  • using PhotoShop
  • googling something
  • on Facebook
  • on Twitter
  • on Tumblr
  • on Reddit
  • on YouTube

CATEGORY 2: 3 Points Each

Get a closer look to determine if someone is…

  • studying something within your major
  • coding in any language
  • reading the New York Times
  • taking a BuzzFeed quiz
  • reading anything on BuzzFeed
  • online shopping
  • using their phone to check Instagram
  • eating a snack
  • eating a full blown meal
  • drinking something other than water
  • drawing in their notebook

PLAYTHROUGH: 

I don’t have any photo documentation, simply because that would’ve removed some of the stealth aspect of the game…If I’d have asked my players (my roommate & friend) to take pictures of every category that they checked off, I feel like I would’ve been breaking my own rule of noninvasiveness. Instead, I relied on my friends’ honesty.

Overall, they enjoyed the game. They felt a little weird at first, sneaking around the library, but they said that after a few minutes, they felt more comfortable. My roommate said they felt more comfortable if they acted as normal as possible, instead of trying to actually “sneak” around. Walking normally seemed to cause less of a disturbance as well. Players reported being spotted more often if they tried crouching or moving too quickly like you would in a stealth video game– people other than their “target” would often take notice.

One addition they’d like to add would be more things to spot! For example, they saw many people using their phones, & wished they could count that category multiple times.

Artist’s Statement: My intervention is sort of an anti-intervention. When looking through the readings, in particular the Dada readings, I believe that my inspiration came not so much from the works themselves but from the way in which people have been impacted. After everything we saw in class, including the Humans versus Zombies game & all of the improv games, I thought long & hard about what I would be interested in doing. For a while I was interested in a graveyard as a context for this intervention, & many of my ideas involved myself & my small human skeleton replica placing ourselves within different contexts, but many of these ideas seemed trite & cheap. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to create a game that would actually try its very hardest NOT to intervene with the word around it. Especially after watching The Institute, I was set in my decision to create a work of art that would be as noninvasive as possible. While the world created by The Institute was engaging & really magical, I wonder about the impact it had on certain people– I was rather unclear as to where the reality ended & the fiction began, at least in the video documentary that we watched. Regardless, I wanted to create something that would instead be played parallel to everyday life, as opposed to crossing into it. Additionally, I was unfortunate enough to be sick when this project was assigned. Interestingly enough, that ended up playing a fairly significant role in the development of my project, since it limited where I could go, & thus, my inspiration for this very context based piece. I ended up being limited to the buildings I already knew, & the same concern kept popping into my head: there will be students in there, working, & I don’t want to disturb them! I kept thinking about the issue of the people who aren’t playing the game being negatively affected, & that actually led to my inspiration. What if I created a game that relied heavily on stealth? It’s a mechanic we see often in video games, but what if we applied it to real life? I realized that Snell Library would be a wonderful context for this project, since there would be a large amount of students studying a number of things on a daily basis. My stealth game relies on this– it is essentially a scavenger hunt, where players compete to navigate the building, checking off their score sheets as they find what is required of them. I added the requirement that the players avoid detection in the form of direct eye contact, a mechanic I stole from the Pokemon series. I rely heavily on the honesty of my participants, seeing as they could very easily lie to me. I will of course, not be able to follow them as they move around the building, but I choose to believe that deep down, people are good, & they will not deceive me.

The Rap Intervention

The Rap Intervention

Artist Statement

I thought of the project from watching the intervention example in class where people ended up freezing in place in the middle of the city.  But I could not just copy what they did, so I tried to create something along the same lines as this project. At first, I thought maybe dancing in the street would be fun, but I decided not to do that as I already did that earlier. So I decided that maybe rapping for people would be fun.

With the thought that I should go around and rap for people, I started to think of where I might be able to do this. There were many good suggestions, but then I realized that I did not have to stay put in one place. I could go to the people.

So I made a sign saying “Free Raps” over it and walked around. I ended up walking around curry, a little bit of the first floor the library (I did not want to disturb people) and outside. I would ask people to give me a word and then I would give a one verse rap to it. Keep in mind, I have no rapping ability whatsoever.

People either ignored me or laughed when I walked by with my sign. When I rapped for people, they always had a big smile on their face. That is the biggest positive takeaway from all this: I brightened some people’s days.

The Video

 

Artwork #3: Intervene Iteration 1- Ilayda Hanci

Artwork #3: Intervene Iteration 1

Ilayda Hanci

“Good Vibes”

The main idea of my game intervenes with people’s emotional states. I want to show with my piece that, everybody needs good stuff in their life and they can smile by playing a simple and an easy game.

For this piece, I made a sign declaring that everybody needs something in their life and they can just simply acquire that by taking the word they need from the board. The goal was directly intervening with people’s needs and desires about what they want in their life and what they desire the most to get.

My piece is a large Bristol Board with 14 piece of words attached to it. On the paper is the following: “Please take whatever you need today and choose to believe”. I think it has its own charm. I mostly influenced by Yoko Ono as she asks the question to audience and lets the audience to create the piece. In a various number of places and at various times of day I put the sign and waited. In the public busy places, it took very little attention. Part of that was no doubt people were all the time on their phone while walking away from it or too busy to look at it.  The first place that took place for this piece was the Ruggles Station since it is very busy with the students and workers. I posted the board to a place where everyone can see easily while they are heading to school or to work, so they can just take a word they want, want to do, or need in their life to motivate themselves. But it didn’t work that well since everybody was too busy to catch the bust or the train and there were a lot of people so they didn’t read the message at all.

Then I moved the sign to the International Village. The sign did get a few glances, but a few stopped to read it and pick the words they need. Most of the time people were too busy looking at their phones all the time without noticing the things around them. This piece also helped me to analyze people about what was the reaction when they saw it and the influence of the smartphones in people’s daily lives. 6 out of 10 people were on their phone even if someone in front of them stopped to look at the piece.

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