tang.jias

No Pain No Gain Rules Document

Each game starts with two up to many players and each player starts with 3 gainz and 3 life. 

In the start of the game, each player grabs one of the deck of cards in the middle along with three gainz and three life.

Each deck will include three gym cards: Chest Day, Back Day, Leg Day, three socializing cards: Gathering,  Bar, Party, and one Rest Day card

After every player gets their starting cards, discard the extra decks of cards in the middle.

The game starts and rotates through Monday, Wednesday, and Friday where players can make their choices either to socialize or to work out or take a rest(can only take one rest day per week). After making their decision, players flip the card of their choice and put it under the weekday in the middle. After every player makes their choices, reveal the cards and collect rewards. 

Here’s the layout of one week:

• Monday: 

Hit Chest Day: collect 2 gainz

or

Go to a gathering: collect 1 life

or

Rest day: do not collect anything

Every week on monday there will be an event where the players can choose whether to skip. If the player is doing the event simply put a chip next to their card and roll the dice after revealing their cards.

Monday event(can be skipped): roll a four and above trigger success, roll a three below to trigger fail.

If you are doing chest day, hit bench without a spotter

Success:+2 gainz  fail:-2 gainz

Or, 

If you are going to a gathering, participate in a Poker game

Success:+2 life  fail:-2 life

• Wednesday

Hit Back Day: collect 1 gainz 

or

Go to a Bar: collect 2 life

or

Rest day: do not collect anything

• Friday

Hit Leg Day: collect 2 gainz

or 

Go to a party: collect 2 life

or

Rest day: do not collect anything

By the end of each week, if a player has hit all three body parts, he/she collects 4 extra gainz but loses 3 life. On the other hand, if a player went to all three socializing events, he/she collected 4 extra lives and lost 3 gainz.

By the end of each two weeks, if the player has not taken any rest days, they will collect a mental illness card(which does not have a direct effect in the game). 

End of each Month (every four weeks):

The player has to compare life and gainz with his neighbors if his/her neighbor has more gainz lose 5 gainz to his/her neighbor, if his/her neighbor has more life, lose 5 life to his/her neighbor

Win condition:

During the game if any of the players have negative life/gainz, he/she gets eliminated, and the game ends as the remaining players count their total number of life and gainz, whoever has the most wins the game.

If none of the players gets eliminated, the game goes on till the end of a semester(3 month/12 weeks), and whichever player has the most life and gainz wins the game.

Artist Statement

For my final project, I decided to use my own experience as a college student and the way I see my peers spending their free time as an inspiration. Although college life grants the students a lot of freedom over their free time, it can be stressful when a student decides to never take a rest day and spend all their time doing activities. During the playtests of my game, I observed that most players will always go for activities(working out and socializing) which is the optimal way of playing the game even when they receive a mental illness card every two weeks. Just like in real life many people neglect the importance of taking a break, instead they would let their mental burden accumulate inside to live their life in an “optimal” strategy. Similar to Yoko Ono’s Blood piece: “Use your blood to paint. Keep painting until you faint. Keep painting until you die.” Some people would live their lives with little breaks, and they spend most of their free time socializing and doing activities until they are mentally and physically exhausted.

This project is inspired by the Yes-men. As they put on a satire designed to mock the current social issues, I was inspired to do this project to expose and criticize the downfall of social media: where there appears to be more meaningless videos and less creative content.  After seeing Yoko Uno’s PAINTING TO ENLARGE AND SEE and PAINTING TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN YOUR HEAD, I decided to use the Instagram creative mode and put on a minute-long clip of blank grey canvas on my Instagram story. The original intention of this project was to make people realize the time they spend on meaningless social media content is wasted. 

After I posted five 15-second blanks, 130 people clicked on the story and 108 people watched all the way till the last clip. To my surprise, when I asked some of my friends their reaction to my social media post, none of them thought they wasted time. “It feels nice to take a break from scrolling,” one of my friends says. This emergent behavior made me realize that similar to Yoko Uno’s piece, the blank grey clips are like empty canvas: people are granted the freedom to have different perspectives on the piece.

Game rule/modification on Monopoly:

Start of the game, the three players play rock paper scissors to determine the role of upper class, middle class and lower class.

• Lower class starts with $500 Cash and no property
• Middle class starts with $2500 Cash, both water and electric companies and properties from Valtic Ave all the way to New York Ave.
• Upper class starts with $5000 Cash, all the Railroads and properties from Kentucky Ave to Boardwalk.

Upper class moves first, followed by middle class and lower class. The opportunity and chest blocks are just blank spaces. 

When stepping onto the tax block, the upper class will have to pay double, the middle class pays the same amount, and the lower class do not have to pay.

During their turn, the players can choose to donate to other players, there is a $1000 donation cap. Only half of the donation will be able to go through, the other half goes to the bank.

When facing a big amount of rent the lower class can choose to go to jail to avoid rent. 

Passing through the starting square means going over one generation, the players will gain ⅕ of their total savings. 

The game ends when one of the players goes bankrupt or the leading player is two generations ahead of the last player. 

Artist Statement: As Dada started as an anti-war movement, many of the artworks during this period are created to protest against social issues. My project took inspiration from Yoko Ono’s White Chess in which she modifies the traditional game chess to make it more similar to actual warfare where there is no clear distinction between friendlies and enemies. After learning about the Dada movement and Yoko Uno’s piece, I want to create something that reflects contemporary social issues: class conflicts and the poverty cycle. Using the existing game Monopoly, I was able to modify it to make it simulate the actual economic situation of upper class, middle class and lower class. In the hope to evoke the players’ strong emotion towards the unfair social phenomena of the poverty cycle. 

Light Painting

Install your camera onto a tripod. 

Set shutter speed to 10 seconds, aperture to f22, and ISO to 100

Turn off all of the lights in the room.

Go in front of the camera.

Hold up any light source and perform a dance.

Artist statement: The purpose of this piece is to create free-flowing and random yet unique art pieces. This is inspired by the avant-garde artists who defy the rules of mainstream notion of art and use pouring paint to create their own form of art works. As I read through Yoko Ono’s Grape Fruit, her score of “painting to be stepped on” interested me. When she uses random footsteps on the street to create paintings and artworks on a canvas, it inspired me to transfer some kind of movement into a still painting. Using a pitch dark room as a black Canvas, and bright neon light as the brush, the performer will be able to move in a 3D space and create a one of a kind 2D light painting.  By transferring a spontaneous dance in a room to a light painting, no one would know how the result is going to come out until the camera finishes processing. I think each result of this piece is an unconfined piece that cannot be replicated ever even with the same performer and photographer. From a personal perspective, I fell in love with photography because through the lens of a camera, I can frame and capture things that human eyes sometimes cannot perceive. The more long exposure photography I take, the more amazed I am by some of the creations I made with just a camera. I am able to pause time and capture some of the most spontaneous moments that happened in my life. Just like these light paintings, these paused memories are unique artworks to me that no one else can replicate.