xiaow

Rules:

It’s a dangerous world out there. Injustices and inequalities have led to a never-ending global warfare. Ironically, the only place that is safe is the prison.  For the sake of your own survival, you must try your best to make your way into the prison.

1. Select two players to play the game and another moderator — total of 3
2. Each is given a set of two cards, one with 10 different country flags, and another with 10 curse words from the respective countries (the words are jumbled up)
3. Ask two players to engage in a meaningless back and forth argument for 60 seconds
4. Moderator will determine who was winning the argument and that player will be the one to go first
5. Player 1 will choose one of the 10 curse words to swear at Player 2
6. Player 2 responds “where is that coming from?”
7. Player 1 must attempt to guess which country the swear word is from and
   1. If correct, the moderator will cross off the word and country and the player will have earned the according prison sentence.
   2. If incorrect the turn ends and the other player may reuse the word and country.
8. It’s now Player 2’s turn and repeat steps 5 – 7.
9. Repeat step 8 until all words and countries have been crossed off.
10. Tally up each player’s sentence and the player with the longer sentence wins the game.

Player cards

Prison sentences

Artist Statement:

This was definitely the topic that I was looking forward to the most during this class. I have always been very interested in using seemingly very simple games or puzzles to reflect on a message. I think one of the biggest topics of 2016 has been the US presidential election, which is why I decided to pursue a very political piece.

The year has been a strange one, with President-elect Trump, in particular standing out as one of the most distinctive and usual candidates the country has witnessed. For the people who support him, he is the strong figure that will “make America great again.” For his protestors, he is disrespectful and “unpresidential.”

Other major concerns are the potential risks and unrest that Trump’s win may cause for the rest of the world; given that Trump has made multiple promises to drastically shift the terms of alliances and relationships with the world.

So I thought to myself, what if the worst happened, and nowhere in the world could be considered a safe place? What if in this world, in order to survive, one must be radical and occasionally offensive just to survive? What would an experience like this feel?

I must admit that I’m not an avid player of any games, whether it’s indie games or video games. I didn’t have a lot of previous experience to draw upon, but I was very inspired by our 2nd guest lecturer’s games that we play tested. In particular, her game/puzzle with linking ingredients to making drinks and leading to word combinations was very interesting. The notion of taking the unknown and delivering a pleasant surprise was very inspiring to me. I decided to take a similar format and turn it into a 2 player game as I thought curse words require a subject and also an emotional investment.

Class thoughts:

For me personally, as a graduating student this December, this was one the most interesting electives I have taken in my time at Northeastern. If I’m not mistaken, I am the only Business Major in the class.

I came into the class very worried about the art or computer science skills that may have been required or expected. However, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that this class has “no right answer.” All of our projects have been about interpretation, which allowed me to be very creative in a way that my usual business classes don’t encourage.

From the Score to the Appropriation, and to the Intervention; I thought that I tackled each project with more confidence and knowledge. Overall, I’m very proud of my own learning outcomes in the class and I will definitely spread the word among my business classmates that are looking for electives!

Instructions:

The game is to be played with 3+ players

The goal of this game is to win the most amount of chips from other players.

1. Each player is dealt 2 cards and 3 Cheetos as chips
2. Place 3 cards facing up in the center of the table (these are called community cards)
3. Assign a player to begin calling stakes (in number of Cheetos betted)
4. Each player subsequently must either call, raise or fold
5. Deal an extra card once a round of calling has been ended
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 one more time
7. All players are to use their functional cards if applicable
8. Remaining players show cards to determine the winner, whom takes all betted chips

The winner is determined by possessing the better hand, the rules are:

• High > Low
• Same suit > varying suits
• 3 consecutive numbers > Pair
• 3 of the same > 3 consecutive numbers
• If +2 or +4 is shown, add the respective number of cards to the community deck
• If color changing card is shown, the player may switch any card for a card in the deck
• Skip and reverse cards are not available

Ideation

I have always been an avid card game enthusiast, whether that is Poker, UNO or almost any variation of card games that involves a bit of strategy and reading the group. To me, I find it very enjoyable as it’s not strictly relied on the mastery of a skill such as professional sports, and it’s also not too random as the likes of Rock, Paper, Scissors or flipping a coin.

However, creating this game was initially very difficult simply because my mind was going through too many possible card games and I didn’t have a good starting point. Finally, I decided to reverse-engineer the ideation process and start with a theme and message instead of starting with a game to appropriate. I had a lot of fun playing around with the idea of Fluxus from my Score assignment and wanted an element of that, whilst also incorporating some of my understanding of Dada. I arrived at the conclusion that I was certain  I wanted to create a multiplayer game that had both an element of skill and luck within, which is when 2 of my favorite games came to mind — Texas Holdem and UNO.

Inspiration

One of the reasons I chose this game for my final iteration is because I was very excited about the changes in the meaning. I saw this a perfect fit with the material I learned from Dada, where one is encouraged to create new meanings by presenting something to people in a new perspective. In this instance, I have turned Texas Holdem, a game known for being very strategic, calculative and detail-oriented into an unpredictable one that relies greatly on instinct. As a Business student, this is even more interesting, as I am trained to look for patterns and reduce risk, and now I am forced to embrace the unknown. In this game, neither the number of players or even number of cards is known, with the latter also being potentially subject to change during the game.

Another concept that I incorporated was the “happening” from the Fluxus. After all the cards are dealt, any wild cards held by the players (if any) directly changes the deck either by switching out cards in the community deck and players’ hands, or adding cards to the community deck. This creates a great element of surprise that cannot be planned. In regular Texas Holdem, a player knows that they have 2 cards in their hands and that they will be given 5 cards in the community to work with; whereas in this case, one could have both their cards switched out with 9 cards to play with. The unpredictability is also increased with a larger number of players.

Play-testing

Play-testing this game was very fun, with a total of 4 players and 2 rounds, there was a round with multiple wild cards and a community deck size of 9, and another round where no wild cards were shown and maintained the default size of 5. My classmates seemed to respond positively and I was very happy with the game overall.

Score:

1. Invite a friend and a stranger
2. Ask friend and stranger to step out of the room/sight
3. Out of two random pieces of clothing shown, instinctively click the one you personally favor within 10 seconds
4. Repeat 9 more times
5. Ask friend and stranger to perform score for you with you in mind (click the one they think the initiator will favor)
6. Compare results

“Friendly expression” was created and structured predominantly around my personal fascination of exploring the relationship between artistic statements and real life manifestations. As brought up in class, there are many different categories of items or themes that could compared as the content of the score. However, personally I have always been interested in exploring the logic behind one’s taste in fashion. Why is it that two people very similar in upbringing or background may prefer totally different styles? Are we attracted to people who have similar styles?

To me any form of self-expression is a form of art, which is why the way we choose to dress ourselves is also a piece of artwork; one that’s everchanging and evolving over time. This led to the inspiration of “Friendly expression,” which is a test designed to prove my hypothesis of “people with similar taste in art are more likely to foster relationships.”

In the actual creation of the score, I was heavily influenced by the ideas of “Happening” and “Fluxus.” I wanted to create an environment that encouraged instictive thinking and decision making, one that’s special to the performer of the score during the time in which the score if performed. That’s why I added a 10 second timer and set the default to a comparison model between 2 items rather than a yes/no model 1 by 1.

Evidently, there are also heavy traces of inspiration of Fluxus in this piece. This was my way of attempting to explore the blurred line between art and life in the form of fashion, but also clarify the relationship between how our interpretation of art may impact the way we shape our social circles and life.

When performing this score in class, Marina was my principal volunteer, and she selected two more volunteers in class that she thought knew her the best (partner A) and least (partner B) respectively. Results showed that partner A scored better than partner B in selecting the items that Marina preferred.

Marina:

Partner A:

Partner B:

Marina’s results:

Partner A’s results:

Partner B’s results:

I would accredit this phenomenon due to partner A’s furthered understanding of Marina as a friend, life-form and artistic self. It was also interesting to observe partner B’s reaction throughout the process of performing the score. Being asked to consciously decide and recommend clothing items for Marina, partner B was in reality being asked to try and understand Marina’s artistic preferences. As a couple of decisions went by, one could observe partner B formulating his own understanding of Marina as he went from spending almost the full 10 seconds and looking at Marina in the beginning to flying through his latter decisions.

Although partner B had a higher discrepancy overall in his suggestions, his top choice was actually consistent with that of Marina’s and partner A’s.

This idea of understanding a person and being able to deduce their likings/preferences and preferred method/medium of self expression is the primary goal of this score and with a larger and more diverse sample I believe I could draw some interesting conclusions.