The true Orientation Guide for Northeastern Students is here.

• Thoughts and Feedback

  • Initial Idea: The initial thought was to make a board game using the Northeastern campus map as the “appropriation”, inspired by Fluxus’s idea of dissolving the boundary between art and daily life. The overall gameplay is that there are two sides of teams, Professor and Students, where the Professor must catch the slacking student groups using powerful restraining abilities, whereas the student group must stall/procrastinate as much as possible. However, my brain was too focused on the realm of “making a game” since it’s a game course, and the result didn’t turn out well. The reason is that the board game was too harsh to chew on, resulting in players having difficulties understanding the situation, hence, hard to play.
  • Feedback from Peers and Celia: The playtesters gave me several refreshing ideas, one of them suggested completing the procrastination tasks in the real world, which resonated with Professor Celia’s feedback on keeping the sarcasm on what college students are actually doing while making everything look “legit/professional”.
  • Ideation and update: I kept what’s been good from my idea: Northeastern Map(authenticity) and the procrastination goal (sarcasm). Then, instead of making it into a traditional game, I turned the project into a poster that looks like an actual Orientation Guide from the administration office of Northeastern. It looks like an official poster that will guide the first-years, but the content is all about the essence of what an actual Northeastern student would experience when they study at NEU: procrastination, never-on-time train, peak-hour human tide, and the impossible-to-find classroom. To further expand the sarcasm, I created tasks for each place that students could resonate with and laugh when they do so. What also surprises me is that my work completely aligns with Yoko Ono’s thesis of performative tasks using everyday spaces and with simple actions; my poster transforms mundane campus routine into absurd rituals.