Basil

The Game: https://alliumonion.itch.io/conversion-protocol

I came into the creation of this game with a simple premise: to create a game in which the player is given an entirely auditory experience. Nothing in the way of any visuals. Absolutely zilch when it game to information transmitted by sight. In a medium so heavily dependent on visual communication, just as humans are beholden to both the powers and limitations of their sight in reality, this results in a significant shift in the way in which the player approaches the game. Having to rely so entirely on the ear to receive information from the game encourages the player to focus their attention on the only information given to them—the sound.

In making this game I encountered a multitude of setbacks which required me to reduce my scope; thankfully, I was prudent when I set out on this project and developed my game in such a manner that I was able to easily reduce scope without damaging the overall experience. My approach for the game’s content utilized my sound design skills, including the array of effects on the voice heard throughout the game. I would have liked to expand much more on the initial premise of this game, but was significantly hampered by life events occurring at the tail end of the semester; however, I am still proud to have managed to encapsulate, what I believe, to be the core concept, experimental mechanic, and narrative experience that I set out to explore. In the creation of this project I also had the opportunity to develop my technical skills, as I worked to make the game run in browser using HTML5. The fruits of my labor can be seen on itch.io using the link above. And I am certain I will expand upon this initial demo of a game in the future.

Documentation:

Goal:

• Manipulate and weaponize existing bots to impede upon the experience of other Twitter users
• Demonstrate the prevalence and omniscience of bots on social media, in this case specifically Twitter
• Show the predatory behavior of “Essay Writing Services” and their ease of access

Procedure:

• Acquire the permission of the selected affected user
• Go to a recent tweet and reply with some variation of “I will pay someone to write this essay for me”
• View the almost instantaneous response by various bots

Artist’s Statement:

My initial inspiration came from the widespread activist practice of needing to slightly exacerbate a problem or nuisance in order for the proper authorities to notice it and fix it. Sometimes one must make an issue worse so that it either actually steps into the sight of an overseeing organization, or so that it creates enough justification for resources to be spend dealing with the issue. This practice can be seen in a multitude of ways and with varying levels of severity. It might be as simple as widening a pothole or crack in the sidewalk so that the city determines it to be enough of a hazard to merit repair. One man in England taped raw fish to broken ATMs so that banks were forced to service the ATMs when they came to remove the dead fish. It could also be the demonstration of backwards, outdated, nonsensical, or hypocritical laws. The practice of “sit-ins” during the Civil Rights Movement are a fantastic example of exacerbating what was perceived “as a nuisance” to demonstrate the illogicity and backwardness of excluding black customers from restaurants. While no where near as noble—or hard fought—as such a practice, my intention with this intervention was the demonstrate the prevalence and lurking nuisance of web-crawlers and bots on the internet. The selected environment, and specific issue to highlight, was the presence of bots on Twitter; More specifically reply bots offering a service, in this case “essay writing services.” These bots masquerade as authentic people, but are—for the most part—actually a highly networked service of web-crawlers auto replying to individuals lamenting the difficulties of their essay and then connecting users to a paid essay writing service. In this way, these bots act in a particularly malicious matter, as someone not even explicitly asking for such a service—possibly just posting to vent their essay related frustrations to their friends—could find themselves deluged with accounts offering their services at competitive rates. Thus to demonstrate this, I had a friend reply to various Twitter posts with some variation of “I will pay someone to write this essay for me.” Each time resulted in a multitude of bots replying to him, offering their services, and we even saw some other genuine users commenting how my friend had “summoned the bots” or saying something to the effect of “here they come.” This demonstrates that this issue of auto-replying bots is a widespread and known issue on Twitter, but rather than being cracked down upon, they are instead tolerated and ignored as their annoyance is only minor and temporary. Hopefully this intervention helped exacerbate this issue in some individuals’ eyes and compelled some to try and act to resolve this nuisance.

Documentation:

Requirements:

• Minimum of one player
• No player maximum
• A modified digital version of the game Scrabble that could conceivably be played for an infinite (or at least incredibly long) amount of time

Rules:

• Players take turns playing Scrabble as normal
• The game never ends
• The victor is the last person playing with the highest score
• No turn timer
• Individuals players can take a long a turn as they want

Artist’s Statement:

My initial point of inspiration for this game came not from another existing piece of art from the Dada Movement or otherwise, but instead from a game design exercise undertaken in the second semester of my freshman year at Northeastern University. The first assignment I encountered in Professor Christopher Barney’s “Foundation of Game Design” course—or at least in the online experience I was treated to at the time—involved iterating upon one of the most basic physical multiplayer game ever: tic-tac-toe. This was my first experience with the core principle of recursive design, as we were tasked with adding additional rules to tic-tac-toe and thoroughly playtesting after each change. After a few slight changes, I was possessed with the idea of scaling the grid far beyond a simple 3×3, and accompanying this change the introduction of additional players in the forms of more unique shapes: triangle, star, hexagon, checkmark, hashtag, even pentagram—the possibilities are endless. This scaling would of course have to be accompanied by additional length requirements in what would constitute a full “tic-tac-toe”; unfortunately, upon playtesting, this iteration functioned much more as an endurance test than one of strategy and cunning. It was thus that when tasked with the opportunity of appropriating an existing game to create a new experience, I thought of a recent game of online scrabble played—quite foolishly—without the instatement of a turn timer; which understandably resulted in the incredible elongation of what should have otherwise been a brief game. And so I was given my concept, and the execution was fairly simple: bring together a group of friends, modify an online game of scrabble to posses the possibility of continuing ad infinitum, and see how long we lasted. The results can be seen in the photos below. I succeeded in gathering six friends—including myself—and over the course of five hours we lost players until only three of us remained, who elected to all end the game simultaneously. Over the course of these five hours each of our turns became progressively longer as the board become more cluttered and points became harder to come by. This resulted in the constant discovery of incredibly rare words containing some of the higher value consonants. This phenomenon can be seen in “xis” “dioxide” “djinny” “poi” and “zoarial.” Additionally, we discovered that the words were created in a uniquely procedural nature as over the course of multiple hours players managed to find ways to add one or two letters to a preexisting word. The 104 point “dolesome” is a fantastic example of this, as it started as “dol” into “dole” to “doles” which progressed all the way to “dolesome.” Myself and my friends had an incredible time playing this new and unique word-hunting experience; for despite it lasting into the wee hours of the night, our desire to be the last one standing—which also transformed into a level of dogged camaraderie—kept us going. Although, I despite any of ours are keen to repeat the experience any time soon.

Documentation:

State of the final board after five plus hours of play with a dwindling group of six players.

Final winner—myself—and the longest word.

Score:

• Acquire the following dice:
  • 2 Four Sided Dice (2d4)
  • 2 Eight Sided Dice (2d8)
  • 4 Six Sided Dice (4d6)
  • 1 Twenty Sided Dice (1d20)
• Gain access to a Baby Grand or Grand Piano
• Open the lid of the piano and prop it open
• Take the 2d8 and simultaneously roll them onto the strings of the piano
• Note the position of the leftmost d8
• Find the corresponding piano key that vibrates the strings the leftmost d8 lays upon
• Add the values of both d8
• Starting at the key we identified earlier, count up from that key a number of adjacent keys equal to the sum of both d8
• Keep note of these two keys
• Now take the 2d4 and simultaneously roll them onto the strings of the piano near the 2d8
• Note the value of each d4 and their proximity to the d8
• The value of the d4 provides the number of times (in a four note sequence) that each key is played
• The number of times each key is played is taken from the closest d4 to the d8 the key is connected to
• Now take the 4d6 and simultaneously roll them onto the strings of the piano
• Note the position of each d6 and their value
• Find the key corresponding to the position of each d6 upon the strings in the same manner as we did earlier with the d8
• These keys will also be played as the two earlier keys we determined are played, but can be played at any time
• The value of each d6 represents the number of adjacent keys, going either up or down, that can be alternatively played at any time
• Now take the 1d20 and roll it onto the strings of the piano
• Note the value of the d20 and multiply it by 10. This is the number of seconds you will play the piano for. Set a timer for this amount.
• With the correct starting keys identified, and the various values of dice rolled as well as their corresponding effects on how the piano is played in mind, prepare to play
• Start the timer and begin to play
• Stop playing when the timer finishes
• Observe the dice upon the strings of the piano. Repeat all above steps without rerolling any of the dice. Instead note how they have been agitated by your playing and have both new positions and values.
• With these new positions and values identified, prepare to play again
• Start the timer and begin to play
• Repeat ad infinitum

Artist’s Statement:

I was inspired by a number of existing historical musical works both in the form of experimental compositions and musical games. As a whole this section of music that inspired me is referred to as “Aleatoric Music” or “Indeterminate Music.” Music that has some element of its final product left up to chance. The first example of this can be found in the “Musikalisches Würfelspiel” (Musical Dice) which exploded in popularity during the Age of Enlightenment. This was during the “Classical Period” of Music from the mid 1700s to early 1800s and these games allowed even someone with barely any musical knowledge to roll dice and following the instructions of the game put together a new composition every time. Johann Kirnberger’s “The Ever-Ready Minuet and Polonaise Composer” (1757) is one such example, and Kirnberger himself was a student of J.S. Bach. Musical dice games can also be found in C.P.E. Bach’s “A method for making six bars of double counterpoint at the octave without knowing the rules” (1758) and Mozart’s “Instructions for the composition of as many waltzes as one desires with two dice, without understanding anything about music or composition” (1792). While the names of such games are quite overwrought, they serve as the main inspiration for this project. As the concept of using dice to inform various components of performance and provide musical limitations comes directly from these games. However, there are also other elements interacting. The idea of rolling the dice directly onto the strings so that they would interfere with the strings vibration and create a unique sound came from John Cage’s practice of creating “Prepared Pianos.” There was also inspiration from Terry Riley’s “In C” and Earle Brown’s “25 Pages.”

Documentation:

Video of Performance: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YJvM96vsuNFPDkb48

Before Playing

After Playing