Experimental Game Design

Artwork #1: Score

Artwork #1: Sleep Log

by | Dec 11, 2021 |

Score:

Wake up
Draw a line on a piece of paper
Line length is based on how long you slept
Line straightness is based on how well you slept
Repeat the process every morning on the same piece of paper.

Artist Statement:

I was inspired by Yoko Ono’s Painting by Hammer and Nail and former student Justin Brady’s Dream Paper. In both, of their works, a person repeats an action every day in the morning. I wanted to do something similar, and the idea came to me one morning when I had a terrible night’s sleep that I wanted to make a visual representation of how my sleep went.

The main purpose of the art piece is to ritualistically document your sleep and give the quality/length of your sleep some kind of physical form. The first 2 photos are the month of September-October, and then October-November. The last one (the reason why this is so late) is finals week. The first month is substantially more erratic, as my sleep schedule was really messed up, and I wasn’t sleeping well/going to bed at reasonable hours. The second picture shows a much more reasonable sleep schedule. At the time, I was going to bed around midnight and waking up at like 7-9am. I slept very consistently during that time when I wasn’t sick. The final picture shows finals week (or like this past week since most of my finals were due this week.) As you can see, I only slept 5 out of the 7 days, and the sleep mostly was bad quality and short, except for Wednesday where I took a day off to rest.

 

My life

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Get a piece of paper

Get some crayons

Use one color to represent the mood of one day

Draw anything thing I like

Make sure draw on the same paper

Draw for a week

In “Grapefruit “, there are many pieces about painting. Yoko Ono tried to paint room, shadows or other things. My inspiration is color. I think people’s lives are colorful, blue is blue, happy is orange, irritable is red. Every day has its own color. Also, there are many songs use color to represent their mood. For example, there is a lyric talk about it in Taylor Swift’s cruel summer, which is “It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got”. School days may be boring, but they are definitely not colorless. From the color in my works, I can see my daily mood. The red part indicates that I must have had a bad day. Every day something affects my mood. I want to document my life in color, to prove that my life is not black and white. In order not to feel like a zombie during a Novel Coronavirus pandemic, it is important to keep track of your feelings. As a student, it’s easy to tell the difference between a school day and a weekend. From Monday to Friday. I feel like “my life sucks,” but then on the weekend it instantly becomes “love & peace.” The result is messy, but it’s also organized. The proportion of each color is about the same, and there will not be a picture of one color. T his is my life, too, and it doesn’t seem organized, but the proportions are just right. Drawing is really an amazing thing, and the colors are the same. People can do anything with drawing and use color to express any emotion they want to express. I think that’s what makes this assignment interesting.

Smoothie Piece – Xavier Meade-Kelly

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Smoothie Piece

Record everything you eat during a meal

Repeat this for every meal for three days

Gather together the foods on your list

Place all the foods inside a blender and blend.

Pour it out into a cup.

Take a sip

 

When I began to bounce ideas around for my score, I first looked to existing pieces for reference. Most of my favorite pieces could be executed by a single person, and the ones that really stuck out gave the performer nonsensical or uncomfortable instructions. My biggest inspiration was definitely Yoko Ono’s collection of scores called Grapefruit, which includes a number of works in this vein.

As I began to zero in on my idea, I realized that I wanted to involve food in my piece. Food is a constant in the human experience. Everyone eats food, everyone enjoys food, and everyone appreciates food. Even though food unifies us, it also sets us apart. Some people view food as a means for moral expression, choosing not to eat animal products or food produced by certain companies. Food also marks culture, with every region spawning a number of unique dishes. 

At the end I settled on blending together all the foods eaten for three days into a single smoothie and taking a sip. I thought it would be interesting to combine all the different things I’ve eaten into one substance, and to combine all of the tastes I’d experienced into a single sensation. In a weird way the container I kept the smoothie in mirrored my stomach, as both essentially contain the same things.

On my third day I began to gather together all of the foods on my list. At the end of the day I blended them all together and placed the smoothie into a refrigerator. I presented my score in class by reading out the instructions, and taking a sip in front of everyone. One Idea I had was to plan out all of my meals so that the smoothie would taste good, but I decided to just eat what I normally eat: steak, salads, macaroni, and other foods were all blended together into one bizarre amalgamation. When I finally tasted my creation, I regretted that decision, as it tasted so very bad, so bad that I felt a little sick for a few hours. 

Scott Pignataro: Artwork #1 – Score: Adapt

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

Score:

Find a place with a table and chair

Take out your work and place it on your chair;

Then sit on the table.

Start Working.

Struggle.

Adapt.

Artist Statement:

This Score was inspired by a lot of things but many by my roommates. One day I came home and all my roommates were working so diligently at our dining room table. Watching them work made me think about how people often do not think about how important something is in our daily life. I do not often think about how useful a chair and table are but watching my roommate struggle to get any work done while sitting on the table really shows how underappreciated some things are. I was also inspired by the idea of using things in a way they are not intended to be used. When you use something in a way it’s not intended it can have really fun and humorous results. In the case of my score my roommate had a blast making jokes and laughing about the different techniques that could be used to be more efficient. The score that inspired me the most was, Tape Piece III. The score was simple, yet in my opinion very deep. Taking something like an audio tape and using it as a bow for a present or a gift wrapper, as suggested in the score, was really fascinating to me. Most people would never think to use a tape of audio for anything besides listening but Ono had come up with such a unique use for it and I found that really inspirational for my own score.  Seeing how people adapted to the challenge of sitting on a table while having their work on a chair is super interesting. One of my roommates thought it would be easier to work while on his stomach; after switching positions he found, at least for him, it was easier to get work done. I wish I could have had more people try out my score so see different adaptations.

 

 

 

 

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Score: Solve the Puzzle

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Find 

I walk around school grounds, 

trying to get my standing,

there are loopy roads and roundabouts,

A little shop called wall-e’s?

 

It’s all very confusing this property I’m around,

Seems like there’s an overpass,

In the middle of the property,

Purple hues all around it

 

Kids all around waiting

To be let into this hostel

As a supervisor swipes

And off they go 

 

My intention in creating this score was to create a kind of puzzle in a puzzle effect. You as the reader, are trying to figure out what specific place the score is referring to in a treasure hunt like manner. As a child growing up, I’ve always been a fan of puzzles. Every game I am fond of has some sort of puzzle element involved in it. I even remember being 10 going to restaurants and my parents giving me sudoku puzzles to keep me distracted. I think this lends itself to this score, I love the idea that someone is reading it in passing and thinking about it as they walk around campus.

The piece was inspired by Yoko Ono’s TRUTH/FALSE in Grapefruit. It sounds like the list of things she’s trying the readers to figure out what’s true and false. But the more you read the more you find similar topics, hidden messages. “All fruits are related species of banana, which was the first fruit in existence. The Bible lied about the apple because they felt mentioning the word banana was too undignified.”  It seems like simple commentary but there is some sort of distaste that Yoko was trying to convey! My score didn’t end up being as deep but used the hidden message idea to make a puzzle!

 

Documentation:

Here I have attached an image of the “bridge” hallway connecting both halfs of this building. The purple hues, the loopy roads and then finally the building in question in the score is West Village F

 

Xuanshuo (Stone) Zhang – Weather Piece

by | Oct 15, 2021 |

Score:

Check the weather forecast on your phone

Check the percentage for rain

If the percentage is under 7, pick a 20-sided die

If the percentage is under 13, pick a 10-sided die

If the percentage is under 20, pick a 6-sided die

If the percentage is under 30, pick a 4-sided die

If the percentage is over 30, flip a coin

If the percentage is over 75, stay home

Roll the dice

If the roll is higher than one or the coin lands on heads, proceed with your day

If not, stay home

 

 

Artist Statement:

As a wannabe game designer, I always look for ways to make my life fun. I think that randomness can usually be a pretty fun aspect. As someone who has difficulties making choices, I would sometimes use methods such as flipping a coin or rolling a dice decide whether or not I would do an action, not unlike in a table-top role-playing game. One of the things that we do most regularly is check the weather report to see if we would want to participate in any outdoor activities. Part of the scores that I’ve read including Yuki Ono’s works and works in the archives of the blog pages that interests me is that some of them are really simple instructions and based on things we do mundanely. I wanted to create my score based on something we do regularly and incorporate randomness to make it fun. So I decided to incorporate both of those elements, something I do regularly and random element that is common from games. I ended up deciding on weather, because it is one of the things that my life depends on, and it is easily associated with probability. For the randomness part I chose dices and coin flip because they are pretty easily accessible. One of the goals of my score is that it should be something that is easy to do, so someone might want to just do it for a bit of fun one day. Personally, among the scores I read either in class or as homework, the ones that are doable and easy to do strikes with me the most, because being able to participate in them helps me understand them a bit more. Some of the examples are Clock piece, and Wood Piece, which involves actions that I would sometimes do (except not with wood). When combining what I want to put into my score and the concept of these scores as explicit instructions, I decided to specify what to use to decide the probability for each precipitation range closest to representing the probability of the dices. My score does not have any deeper meaning, but I hope it is something that people would find at least a bit fun.

 

Documentation:

Xinyi Ren Score: Trace

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

Trace

Turn on your computer

Fix a piece of paper on the mouse pad

Tape a pen to the mouse

Start playing games

Change the paper or stop when you want to stop

Observe the path of your mouse movement while playing the game recorded on the paper

 

Artist Statement

My inspiration comes from Yoko Ono’s grapefruit. The book’s content is simple and straightforward, but readers can feel a kind of romance and sincerity. These “Poems” are discovered from every corner of life, and even some unobtrusive things can be given important significance, which makes me choose to observe one of my most common things in life from an unnoticed angle. So I began to observe the computer keyboard and mouse because these are the props I use every day. After a long time of use, I found that several commonly used keys on my keyboard were obviously worn out, but I usually don’t notice that I often use them during play.

The results of these almost unconscious behaviors may be more evident than I thought. I want to use a visual way to record the use of the mouse. People will find that the mode of mouse movement in different game activities is also different, and there is a significant gap in the length and density of lines presented by high DPI and low DPI settings. Even if you play the same game on the same device, results can vary from person to person. At the same time, I think this will also change the behavior of “playing video games,” from short-term preservation to long-term preservation, from personal experience to an art form that others can understand.

When I was doing this score, it gave me a new understanding of my subconscious actions. When I was fully focused on the game, my actions were not what I thought they would be afterward. I originally thought that the moving track of the mouse should be smooth and coherent, but in fact, most of the turning points are stiff and sudden. At the same time, in the game, I pause the mouse in several specific areas more frequently than I thought. When I perform this score on the same game again after a period of time, the pictures composed of these separate and broken lines look very similar to the last time. From this I sensed a pattern hidden beneath the randomness, which is a very wonderful experience.

 

 

Self-Portrait Score – Aaron Cai

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

Make a self-portrait

Destroy it

If It is a drawing, rip it to shreds

If it is a sculpture, smash it to pieces

Gift what remains to a friend

 

Artist’s Statement:

I struggle with my self-image, so I wanted to do something with self-portraits. I liked the idea that a self-portrait can be in many forms and styles, so I decided to leave that up to the reader. I specifically suggest a sculpture to let the reader know that it doesn’t have to be a drawing. The idea of destroying a self-portrait is cathartic for me. It is also pretty poetic. As for the last line, I wrote it because I think art should be given away to people, not necessarily for free, but the artist shouldn’t hang on to their work forever. Not only that, I just like gifting things to friends, so I think gifting a destroyed self portrait would be really fun to do. The reason the score is formatted the way it is is due to inspiration and influence from Yoko Ono’s scores. I really enjoyed her slightly ambiguous and rhythmic style and wanted to imitate it in this score. I hope I was successful.

Jiashi Tang_Artwork #1 Score

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

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. 

Write a Song

by | Oct 15, 2021 | ,

  1. Find a musical instrument. If you cannot find one or own one, then make one. You do not need to be able to play the instrument.
  2. Improvise something; a short rhythm or melody will worm.
  3. Record the improvisation.
  4. Repeat the improvisation until you’re sick of it.
  5. Wait a day.
  6. Play the improvisation again until you’re sick of it.
  7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you one day forgot to perform the piece.
  8. Play the original recording once.

Artist’s Statement:
Prior to this class, I was not aware of scores, so my entire understanding of them is largely informed by what we’ve discussed and read for this class. Yoko Ono’s scores are the ones I am particularly familiar with given the readings, so my score’s format is largely informed by her style. John Cage was also a partial inspiration, but primarily with how he dealt with music rather than by any specific piece or aspect of his style. The title and thematic goal of the score is actually inspired by the song Sing from Sesame Street and the lyrics “Sing/Sing a song” which to me carry a very “anyone can do it” attitude that I was inspired by. When writing this score, I wanted to find a process that I was both familiar with yet accessible to a large number of people, and making short works of music by tapping out a rhythm or plucking on a stretched rubber band is something I enjoy doing while bored. I then extrapolated that process, treating it like composing a song, with some of the ideas behind this being how a song can change over the course of being written, how the things we remember change even over short distances, how repeating the same process that once seemed stimulating can become boring and irritating over time, and so on. In actually performing the score, the rhythm I tapped out was intended to fit a 5/4 meter which actually changed as I performed the score on my own over the next couple of days. The rhythm gained a beat which changed the meter to 6/4. This change was actually an intended goal of the score, as I wanted to capture the way a piece of music can change based on memory. If I were to iterate on this score, I’d probably expand its scope to a large group of people, maybe around ten, and have them all perform an improvisation collectively. Over the coming days, they would individually continue the score until a week had passed where they would then present what they remembered the improvised piece as.