My work is called “echoes from the past”. It was inspired by the concept of recycle and reuse—-turn a trash into something useful again. However, I decide to reuse the “meaning” or “memory” of the trash, therefore, I decide to let the players draw the meaningful objects that they threw away for some reason. It can work both as a way to introduce each other, and it can also be use to regenerate new meaning and new stories through the use of AI.
The first prototype did not went very well, as the rule at the time was to only draw the lasting thing player threw away, and I eventually realize that this usually cause the players to only draw food & drinks bottles/packages, as these are the most commonly thrown objects. Though I guess it can still somewhat fit with the topic of appropriation, as they showed how easily are we throwing packages & bottles and created tons of trash at the same time; but I still decided to change the rules to make the game more fun and longer. Thus, I changed the rule of drawing “the last object that player threw away” to draw “an object that was meaningful to the player but eventually got thown away”.
Echoes from the past
Goal of the game:
-Create a new meaningful story based on the once meaningful objects that once gave the player some memorable experience. Those objects have to be important for the players, but were thrown away from their life for some reason.
1, Gather 3-5 players, and find a large canvas.
2, In an order, the first person will draw 1 meaningful object, and write down a short & brief story beside it, explaining the player’s experiences with the objects, why they were once important for the player but eventually thrown away.
3, After the first person finished the drawing and the explanation, the rest will repeat the process in an order. If a player has multiple objects they wanna draw, then they have to choose the one that can best fit with the topic/genre of the last person’s object.
4, The goal of the game is trying to create a story, and the last player will draw interactions between the objects after everyone draw their object (for example, if a person drew a bottle and the other drew a cup, the last players can freely add in some line to make it look like some liquid is transferred from the bottle to the cup).
5, After everyone finished all their drawing, the game hoster will take a photo of the canvas, and give it to an AI. The hoster will ask 3 questions:
-What is this?
-Can you make a story from it?
-Can you paint it better?
6, Record AI’s response.
After I changed the rules, the second and also the final runthrough went much better than the first try. Players created interesting drawings and eventually generated interesting new story.
