Score:

Let an hourglass run for a minute or two.

Three people are doing their own thing.

The two become the painting and one becomes the painter.

The two don’t move by themselves as the hourglass flows.

Only the painter can move them.

Before the hourglass is up, he must return to his original position.

The hourglass goes.

The living are no longer the painting.

Work’s Intention

My intention with this wasn’t too complicated.As a child, I had always dreamed of being able to freeze time, and so this is basically bringing that into a game-like setting. My goal is, for a minute or two, let that child within someone to run out and play around and mess up the world. Imagine you were told that you could stop what everyone was doing, and then mess with it. Make your own creation. That is why I named it as so– a living painting. A painting is a representation of what you want on paper, and so I took that idea and placed it in reality, but mixed it with my old childhood fantasy. It is a simple game that has no real depth or intention, but just some fun. It is also very interesting to see what people are willing to do and what ideas they get when they are given complete freedom to screw with the “world” as they see fit. Like a child’s playground with living people. Well, when it’s put like that, it sounds kind of morbid, but I believe it gets the point across. Another major part is that, like every child’s fantasy (and especially a child’s imagination as he grows older), it comes to an end for the most part, which is why the people are able to move after because the “painting” moment is over. I still kind of wish I was able to do this because it would be a pretty overpowered ability to have.This specific iteration of the piece went through a bunch of different versions. The other ones were a lot more complicated, so I made this one a lot simpler.

Work’s Influence

Like mentioned before, a major influence was the dream of freezing time and doing what you want while time is frozen. This pseudo-version of that is as close as we can get to something similar to freezing time. But another influence would be my background in psychology and sociology. I always want to know how people will react and what interesting things they can come up with when given free rein. As I am a very awkward child who is not well versed in the idea of common sense, I am still ways off from predicting this sort of this, so it brings laughs as well. One of Yoko Ono’s pieces that inspired this one was the baby carriage, mostly because of how people would react to an empty carriage. It seems really funny, to do what you want, like driving an empty baby carriage around, and see the weird looks on people’s faces and how strangely (or not) on how they react to you.

The Painting

I actually found very interesting what my friend Ben did as the painter. For this score, I enlisted the help of my three roommates. Ben was the painter, and Cam and Ryan were part of the painting. He first started to mess with Cam, then moved to Ryan, then almost went back to Cam when he thought of something. Something that I probably would have never done or figured out. Unfortunately, it is rather explicit and inappropriate, so I can’t say it outright, but he placed a tissue full of lotion in Ryan’s hand and drew a pic of a nude woman and put it in front of Ryan. A very “interesting,” if I might say, approach to the game. I did not think it would go that way, but it did. Very cool how the game went a whole different path from what I initially intended.

CAUTION!! A slightly offensive and inappropriate drawn image may appear at end of video. User Discretion is advised.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7dmQkZFrzNEdVU2elZrR2VNN1E

Cathartic Fruit Salad
 With friends or alone
 Go to a public place with fruit, a blunt implement, and a marker.
 Write something on a piece of fruit
 destroy it
 Repeat until no fruit remains.
 If someone asks you what you are doing
 Invite them to join you.
 

Artist Statement: 
This piece is based on the overarching ideas in a lot of happenings and fluxist pieces where playfulness is at the forefront. This score is focused on a very tactile experience, from the writing your thoughts or anxieties onto fruit, to literally smashing that fruit, often getting fruit juice all over yourself. But what it is most is fun. Its designed to be satisfying, whether its done alone or with an entire class, and it always balances the personal and the public. I feel like I combined the core ideas behind "Stone Piece" by Yoko Ono and Alison Knowles' "Make a Salad," where there is a personal element to the piece that you share with others without them getting to know the details as seen in the former, as well as the playful and fairly comical nature of things similar to the latter. The thing I like most about fluxist art is that artifacts don't need to be permanent, and meanings don't need to be vast or overly thought provoking. The simple joy of my piece is my favorite part. When someone reads it, they laugh. Its a silly idea. But when it's implemented, it gets to be cathartic. Despite the simplicity, you can ultimately find different experiences based on who is doing the score. For instance, when I performed it in class I used it as a way to clear my anxieties about failures. I would write hopeful or affirmative statements, and in destroying the fruit attached, I would activate the truth of those statements. Others just enjoyed the hammering of fruit, while a couple people I talked to used it to get out frustrations about people who have wronged them. No matter what the player puts in, the outcome is the same: a simple joy of smashing fruit. It activates a childish glee that I think many fluxist pieces thrive on, which is something that I think is very important to spend time on as we grow more jaded to the world around us. 

Watching people perform the score during class and in a session afterwards showcased exactly what I intended. People would start finding creative ways to destroy the fruit. Because the instructions are vague enough in how you go about destroying the fruit, it allowed people to choose to throw fruit into cement to destroy it, or even grab a friend and play baseball with a banana. It was very playful, and everyone would usually come out the other side with a simple comment:
"Smashing fruit is fun."

Photograph (Score)

https://experimentalgamedesign.sites.northeastern.edu/files/2017/09/Photograph.pdf

Inspiration

My piece of score was inspired by Yoko Ono’s utilization of the environment and audience’s interpretation. In her scores, they can be performed in pretty much any kind of environment, which makes each happening that the audience participate in unique and different from others. That’s what I really liked about her scores, because every time her scores are performed, a different result is produced. A different environment takes part each time. The little details that we don’t often notice in our everyday environment may also be involved in her scores. With that said, my score works by having a person photograph something of “significance” in their environment. After that, find another person to photograph something of “significance” in the same environment, but this time with first person’s picture in the frame. Repeat this process until there is no significance left in the room. So my score is inspired by the environment aspect of Yoko Ono’s work. I hope that through this score, people may notice about and pay attention more to the little details in their environment, and perhaps become more aware that even the smallest detail can be of “significance”, that there is more to one’s everyday life / routine. On the other hand, I also wanted my work to be very open to interpretation. For Yoko Ono, the steps in her scores are very broad, vague and open ended. Anyone could interpret her scores very different ways and that is what I like so much about her work. Different interpretations, ideas, and thinking could come into play by having the audience to participate. With that said, I think it’s that open-ended aspect that makes the performances of her scores much more interesting and fun, because every performance would be different. Overall, I was very inspired by how Ono doesn’t follow the rules, and how she has kind of a laissez faire way of doing things. I hope that I could implement such ideas into my score too. Other works that have inspired this piece would be the movie Inception. I really liked the idea of layers and how each layer of the dream state becomes deeper in the movie. However for this case, each layer of picture is meaningful in its own way. Celia have mentioned to me that my score reminded her of the TV Buddha by Nam June Paik, and now that I’m thinking about it, I would certainly agree that that piece has a similar concept to mine, which I admire. I like how that piece has like an infinite recurring action similar to my score. My score has that degree of infinity aspect to it too, because people can take however many pictures they want.

Documentation

 First picture taken in the score today

The final picture of the score from today’s class

After performing the score today in class, there are some things to consider about next time this score is done. The camera quality of the phone plays a big role, because lower quality cameras may make certain pictures harder to see, which thus affects all layers of photos in the score. Another thing is the distance between the phone with the picture and the phone with the camera. In previous iterations, I didn’t explicitly mention distance that the phone should be inside the camera frame. The further the distance may make it difficult to view the picture so I changed that to, the phone must be placed in either one of the four corners of the camera frame. One last thing that I noticed when performing my score in class today is the lighting. It is important to keep in mind the lighting of the shot, and make sure that it doesn’t affect the overall lighting of all previous pictures. Such things are important to consider about when performing the score because one mistake could potentially affect all previous layers of pictures.

Iterations

1. My idea started off first with Snapchat, and how you can add friends into a “group / shared” story function. I wanted to do this score where people just basically take and upload snaps of something of “great significance” in their environments to the group story. However, I didn’t think this would be unique as others may view that as just a typical Snapchat story.
2. Andre made an interesting suggestion in which instead of doing a picture within a picture, layer by layer, the audience would get their phones and each take a picture or something significant, until there is no one left, and combine all those phones together  in one last photo frame, with one last significant part of the environment in the middle. So instead of having one phone in each photo every time, this would be having all the phones involved in one picture.
3. Finally, another iteration that could be tested in the future would be to just be consistent with 2 phones. 2 phones with good quality cameras and see if that could overcome the quality issue.

Overall, the score went very smoothly. People brought in different ideas as to what significance was to them in the classroom environment, and people seemed to enjoy taking part in the score. The final picture was not very clear and hard to see because of the phone camera quality. However, next time, we could take the suggested iterations above into consideration to hopefully produce better and more interesting results!

Artwork #1 (Score): A Self-Perpetuating Piece

Read this one line at a time. Do not move paper to reveal the next step until you’ve completed the instructions in the previous one.

Walk up to somebody.

Ask if they want to play a game.

If they say no, keep asking new people until somebody says yes.

When they say yes, cover up all steps except the first with the paper sleeve, hand them this piece of paper, and walk away.

(This score is meant to be written on a small piece of paper that can be slipped into a paper sleeve to cover up each step. See pictures below for reference.)

Artist’s Statement

In total, I made three copies of this score, all slightly different and with slight but insignificant modifications. One was written on a medium sized piece of paper in thick black marker, the second was written in pen on an index card, and the third was written in blue sharpie marker on an index card. I like the idea that there exists only three copies of this score, each slightly aesthetically different, and that I have absolutely no idea where any of them are.

Most people looked at the score, did not follow the first instruction and read the entire score, and then did not take immediate action. In fact, many did not take any action at all and simply went about their work as if nothing had happened. This was an interesting result— I learned that most people aren’t very likely to follow a set of instructions given to them by a stranger. This made it feel especially exciting (for me) when somebody actually did follow the instructions.

While I did find inspiration in many of the scores we examined in class, I was mostly inspired by what I did not see in the preexisting scores we looked at. I wanted to see a score with a sense of recursion, but I did not really see this in any of the scores we discussed in class. Because of this, I decided I wanted to make a score that was self-perpetuating. I wanted this score to be able to exist not just when somebody read it, but for it to always be active and alive and to give itself meaning. Simply, I wanted to create something that, by its very nature, didn’t have an end.

I also wanted to capture a sense of uncomfortable, awkward social interaction in this score. I wanted to bring people together but not in any significant way, simply just for a brief and awkward interaction. This score forces two people to share in something and interact but only for a brief moment in time, and the way the player is affected by this interaction is entirely up to them. It could leave them wondering why they were chosen to receive the score, and who they should pass it off to. It could leave them with no thoughts at all. It could make a small impact on their day and make them laugh, make them go on a brief and annoying detour, or mean nothing to them whatsoever. The score that most directly inspired this was Yoko Ono’s Stone Piece. I was inspired by the way Yoko Ono includes her friends in this art piece without them really even knowing they are a part of an art piece. By a lack of an explanation, she is forcing them to make their own meaning out of receiving an unknown powder, which I think creates a beautiful sense of artistic ambiguity that I truly admire and hoped to replicate through this piece.

As someone watching the events unfold and watching the paper as it was passed from person to person, I found it interesting that the paper linked all of these people together without them even realizing it. None of them could possibly know how many people had the paper before them, and I think that the element of mystery and unknowingness surrounding this score is one of its more profound and meaningful components. Even now, not even I, the creator of this score, know where it is, who has it, or all the places it has been. And I love the fact that I never will.

Below are videos of the game being played.

Artwork#1: Writing Unknowns

Score:

• • Obtain a small card and a black pen.
  • Hand the card to someone, and Instruct them to write something you wish someone told them today. They are not allowed to say the thought aloud,
  • Thank them, and hand the card to another person.
  • Do not look at the card again, after this point,
  • After the second person has written their note, stop instructing. Simply let the next people write what they think fits the pattern.
  • Once you believe the card is sufficiently filled, rip it to pieces and dispose of them.

Artist’s Statement

The score was originally written with the idea to encompass or reflect a personal rule I held myself to, and see if it was somehow possible to translate that dogma into some sort of happening or tangible experience that someone else who isn’t me might be able to interpret it in similar fashion, or feel some similar emotion to mine. Although, the original score hadn’t quite worked out because it was perpetuated by each person who participated in the score, and involved the participants maybe divulging information they wouldn’t want to share, so the score wouldn’t get very far. In the final iteration, I decided to switch the prompt from something uncomfortably intimate to a more harmless question with an opening that allows for possibly intimate responses.

The original, empty card.

Due to the nature of the score, unfortunately there are very few documentation pictures.

Both versions of this same score were partly based off pieces such as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece, and Painting to Hammer a Nail. Both highly involved the audience as parts of the piece, which was a strong element of what I learned in my study of happenings in 5D Fundamentals (Which I took last semester). It is the element that even in observing, one becomes part of the happening. If there is nobody to observe the events, they die off and become moot. This illustrates just how important the inclusiveness of the “consumers” is in just about any work – which is a topic that is very much personally relatable to the games industry, as I start to think about it in more technical terms. Another piece which inspired the foundations for this score, I unfortunately can’t remember the name of, but it was very simple yet powerful: It included a small piece of notebook paper, on which the author wrote several of their deepest secrets and displayed it on a museum wall, in plain view. However, the lettering on the page was so meticulously small, that though the words were in plain sight, the information was still obfuscated from just about all audiences other than the author. As mentioned, I cannot remember the piece (and neither does google, evidently), but it served as a large influence on how this score was structured, because of its heavy and personal implications to the author, as well as the obfuscation of information.

As mentioned before, the other half of the score comes from a personal place of mine: a personal rule not to say something I wouldn’t be able to say directly to the topical person, and since that was an integral part of the score, I found it would be an injustice to the point if I were to write it in a way that excludes the “holder” (The individual passing the note from person to person) from the point. This was probably the most difficult part of the score to iron out, because the split of roles from the writers to the holder almost made it seem like the score acted as two separate happenings: the cooperation from one writer to another, and the effort from to holder to remain entirely oblivious to said cooperation. Although, I found it interesting that the separation of roles could make for different interpretations of the same score, so I left it as it was. The main point of the score was to invoke thought onto someone, either from the paranoia of not knowing what was being written, or the reminiscing to find out what it is they wanted to hear today (and why).

Overall, I think the score could have been improved upon with a better prompt that somehow involved the holder with a more active role as well, though the message and original thought behind the score was still present in both iterations. More holder involvement would also make the next iteration easier to document, for sure.

Score:

Find someone nearby to make a confession to
Write your feelings about them on a piece of paper
[DO NOT READ THE NEXT LINE UNTIL THE WRITING IS DONE]
Rip up the paper when you finish
Create a pile somewhere to add your scraps to
When you are done, release your feelings

Artist Statement:

The score Mixed Feelings was inspired by a couple of different things.  The structure of the score was inspired by some of the works done by Yoko Ono in Grapefruit, yet the subject of the score was inspired by my interactions with other people in my life and the nervousness people have towards one another.

Trying to stay in line with the style of Ono’s scores in Grapefruit, I imitated the sentence structures she used. For example, in her scores, most of the sentences begin with an action such as “Do X“.  In turn, my score follows that style. I did not know if I wanted to make this score for a group or for the individual.  In the end, I decided that I would make the language targeted to an individual, but the score can be expanded to an infinite number of people. So, I made changes to some of the lines; the last line used to say “When we are done, release our feelings” but now says “When you are done, release your feelings.” I also imitated the vagueness that is a trademark of her scores such as in City Piece which instructs a person to walk around the city with an empty baby stroller. The phrase “release your feelings” is super vague and can be interpreted in many ways. While I pictured someone discarding the pile, in class, someone in the class took that to mean smashing the pile with their hammer!

As far as the subject of the score, I was focused on people’s interactions with one another. There are so many things which stop people from talking to each other and sharing how they really feel. I know that talking to new people can be really stressful. Something that should be so simple can be so hard. So, I wanted to make a score that can address this issue.

After enacting the score in class, I was really pleased by how the participants reacted. The best part was when I said that they would have to write a confession to the person that they chose. Not knowing if they would be forced to give their paper to the person, almost everyone became uncomfortable. There was no time limit, so I just waited until everyone generally agreed that they were done. When it came time to rip the paper, the group gave a collective sigh of relief.  I think that I would interesting to see what the experience would be like if the whole school shared their “mixed feelings”.

Below are some photos from my own enactment of the score.

Writing the letter

Ripping the letter

Mind Switch

Score：

1. Prepare at least 2 phones (1 for commander, 1 for receiver) and at least 1 hidden earphones (for receiver only). The total number of equipment depends on the number of players, Maximum 4 player for each game.
2. There will be only 1 commander in each round, every commander has the ability to give orders to receivers, and commander will have 10-minute of control rights. Time will start to count when all the receivers arrive at their assigned location. After the 10-minutes limit, the next commander will take over.
3. Ask all the players to roll a dice, the order of commanding rights will be selected base on the results. (The player with greatest dice result will be the first commander, the player with second greatest dice result will be the second commander, etc.)
4. Make sure the commander and receiver/receivers have their phone, and all the receivers have their earphone activated.
5. Commander will first select a location, and receiver will go to the assigned location.
6. If there are more than 1 receiver, commander can ask different receivers to go to same or different locations, and the commander has the ability to choose to either let them do separate actions or interactions.
7. Commander will to give orders to the receivers, and receiver/receivers have to follow the command and make sure other non-players are not aware it is a game.
8. Some examples for the action can be like sit down with a random group of people and join the conversation, or ask a convenience store owner to sell him a car, etc.
9. The game will be ended after all the commanders played their round.

Art Statement:

The idea is inspired by the readings of happening art and the Yoko Ono’s work in Grapefruit. Based on the everyday happening art, I think it does not have to be something we see every day, but it also could be something that we feel every day. Thus, I think the social interaction is another type of everyday happening. After I look at some Yoko Ono’s scores, I tried to keep my words not only simple but also meaningful. Originally, I called this game “Mind Control” because it is easy to understand, but later I think I have to help people to understand more about the meaning of this game. At Last, I changed the name of game to “Mind Switch,” because I think those two words can best describe the score and the meaning of this game. Furthermore, another inspiration is from my friend. We had a conversation about the difficulty of expanding social networks, and people should have a better understanding of each other. People in nowadays are always judging others, but most of them just judging others by limited information, such as first impression, daily actions, etc. Later, he said it is hard to imagine that people can think as others. Therefore, this game was mainly designed to let people understand each other by putting us in other’s shoe, and help people to break the ice with strangers. Feel the way they feel, know the way they know. One of the major score in this game is about the limited control ability and unpredictable randomness. Because when you are the commander and you may give orders to receivers, and receivers may feel that the orders you give are full of randomness since they do not know what you are thinking. Also, you might feel the same way when you are being commanded. Therefore, the randomness is another element of this game. 

Finally, I hope this game can help me to deliver the message that people should know more about others. I hope that I can provide some inspiration to the players, and I hope people can have a little better understanding about themselves, strangers, and this society after this game.

The Shadow Piece

1. Pick a sunny day.
2. Try to step on everyone’s shadow as you walk around.

Documentation:

Artwork 1 (music by KONAMI)

Artist’s Statement:

This score is mainly inspired by my childhood experiences and Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit. When I was a child, I used to play this Asian children’s game called Cǎi Yǐng Zi (Stepping on Shadows). The basic rule is that one person gets to be the monster as the game starts, and then it would chase the others trying to step on their shadows. If it succeeds, then the person who gets stepped on becomes the next monster. It’s a fun game, especially since we do tend to think of shadows as mysterious beings as children. Furthermore, since I grew up in a big city, there were always all kinds of shadows on the streets. When I walked around in the city, I would sometimes put a limit on myself so that I could only step on shadows for every step I take. It was difficult and required a lot of hopping around, but it was very satisfying when I was able to do it successfully.

In Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, she included some scores that were supposed to be done in the cities. For example, “Walk all over the city with an empty baby carriage.” This inspired me to reobserve the way people walk around in cities, and try to figure out a way to make it more interesting. Besides The Shadow Piece, I also wrote some other scores like “Imagine your soul hovering above your head as you walk down the street. Try to see the world from your soul’s perspective” or “Sync yourself with the world around you.” All of them remind me of the hustle and bustle of the city life.

By performing the shadow piece, the performer should forget about their roles and responsibilities for a little while and just focus on this simple activity. The physical exercise and the limit the performers have to put on themselves should remind them of playing similar games in their childhood. The idea is that even while you live a busy life in the city, there are always opportunities to take little breaks, escape the social constraints, and find excitement out of your everyday life. By stepping on the shadows of people around you, they also becomes part of your little “game,” and this gives you a chance to observe people who you walk pass without paying attention to every single day.

Score:

1. Buy a banana and don’t peel it.
2. Put it anywhere you want.
3. Watch it getting ripe or rotting.
4. Take a picture when there is a change happening on your banana.
5. See if you can find something interesting from the banana’s yellow skin with dark spots.
6. Ends its life by any way you want when it almost “dies”.

Art Statement:

This is a simple score that we simply play with a banana. The score might look a little bit weird, but it’s still cool and fun to follow the instructions.

This score is inspired by readings of happening art and Grapefruit. I think that “happening” means art is from life and things in life could be art. For my score, a banana is the most normal thing in daily life. You may ask how a banana can be the happening art. The randomness is an important part of happening, and the randomness in banana is the growth of the black spots while banana is rotting. Different banana may have different pattern of growing spots.  I really hate the spots on banana, because it looks ugly. However, if I am thinking in a different way, the spots on the yellow skin is drawn by the nature randomly, just like drawings of Jackson Pollock. I actually like Jackson Pollock’s drawing, because we can’t tell what the pattern is, but we can still can feel the beauty among random lines and colors. That’s why I add step five to try to catch the beauty or something interesting.

This is score is inspired by readings of Grapefruit as well. When I read the Grapefruit, I always have the question of why should I do that. Later, I realized that if I followed the instructions, other people would ask the question of why should he do that.  Hmmmm… Isn’t cool to be different from other people? People will be so curious when others do something weird and they may even imitate. That’s why I make my score a little bit weird for only looking at the banana. Another characteristic of scores in Grapefruit is that scores are really simple and clear.  That is also what I want to imitate. Moreover, I notice that some scores in Grapefruit are related to food, like she asks people to make a tuna sandwich. The sandwich might make me think about the banana, since the sandwich store sometimes also sells the banana.

When I started doing my score, I found that the growth of black spots on banana was really uncontrollable. I was even worried about if the banana would get any black spots. After about three days, the banana started growing some black spots, but still not obvious. One day after, the black spots grew rapidly, and I noticed that those black spots were some kind of small pits which really looked like the surface of the moon or some planets. Then I played with colors of the photos. I found that if I inverted the color setting, I could get a “night sky” which I would show you in the video. After few days, more spots grew and easily made me think about the leopard skin. Finally, on the day I decided to “kill” my banana by drawing a sad face on banana. I felt a little bit sorry for my banana, especially while I drawing on it.

Hope everyone will treasure their bananas!

Document: